


Work in Progress

by cereal_whore



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Eating Disorders, F/F, F/M, Finn and Fionna are twins, M/M, Marshall Lee centric, and memes, bubblegum and gumball are siblings, bubblegum is a badass and marshall lee apprciates her for it, characterization revolves around anorexia oof, lmao marsh and marce are sTArVinG SiSTErs, marceline is five seconds away from nerfing her brother dead, marshall lee and marceline are siblings, simone is marsh and marce's uH lowkey deadbeat mother but hey she has character depth okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2019-10-19 05:52:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17595677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereal_whore/pseuds/cereal_whore
Summary: Marshall Lee has (1) fear: gaining weight.Then he self-invites himself to Bubba’s party, has a throw-down (and throw-up) with his ex in someone’s bathroom, and somewhere down the shaky line of property damage and a stolen horse, he accidentally holds his first civil conversation with the exasperated host.It takes Marshall Lee less than six seconds after Bubba threatened to call the police, to figure out that he probably doesn’t mind the host as much as he thought he did.It takes him stealing a horse, does he realize he might feel something for the kid that he knows he can’t afford to feel.Marshall Lee has (2) fears.-Or: Marshall crashes Bubba’s party and gets more than he bargained for (ahorse), Marceline is just trying her best, and both just want to make it through the school year without getting expelled.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SO YEAH THIS STORY REVOLVES AROUND MARSHALL LEE'S EATING DISORDERS THAT I'M SELF PROJECTING ONTO HIM SO PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU THINK YOU WILL GET TRIGGERED BY THEM Y33T
> 
> aslo i have no real plot. but the summary, while it goes over what i thnk are the most important (aka the fucking horse in the living room like damn i'm so psyched for that), it might take a while for the plot to get there
> 
>  
> 
> also i have no idea what the fuck im doing haha

Marshall Lee is hot, and he _knows_ it.

It’s probably his one redeeming feature to the rest of his judgemental high school, but even that’s debatable since most people are too busy glaring at him to notice the fact that he’s a fucking skinny legend.

A literal skinny legend.

_Skinny. Legend._

His neglected stomach encourages that label with another uncomfortable wrench, that only supplies to fuel his desire, as it signifies that he’s starving. _And starving = skinny._

* * *

 

He glances at Fionna beside him, who’s currently wadding paper balls into clumps with her spit, her eyes maliciously fixated on her twin Finn, who’s seated diagonally in front of her.

Fionna. With thick thighs, a full frame, and arms that could flex and snap his entire nervous system and dislocate his spine into the astral plane is also hot. Then again, her cheerful composite paired with her ability to commit accidental murder through a muscle-crushing hug probably helps that image of her being pretty hot to everyone.

His eyes flicker over to Lumps, whose hair is another atrocious shade of purple. Well, he mocks Lump’s appearance not because of their body shape- who gives a fuck if they’re fat, it’s because of their gaudy sense of fashion.

For the nth time of the last two minutes that’s had elevator music playing in his mind in the tune of Jake’s periodic table beatbox, he reaches the overarching conclusion that fat doesn’t make a person ugly or beautiful- it simply is what it is.

And for the nth time of the last two minutes that Fionna has been successfully decorating her twin’s backside with melting lumps of paper, his mind successfully screams back at him that he’s hot because when he’s skinny to the point where his ribs look like someone could fucking play them like the xylophone and he has a thigh gap bigger than Bubba’s ego, he could successfully recreate the “hot, skinny white emo goth who vapes out his daddy issues while claiming drinking black coffee and listening to Panic! Is a personality” look. He’s not even white.

But hey, he _rocks_ that look.

Therefore, _starving it is._

He glances nervously at the clock, watching its hands sturdily tick to its destination at twelve, when lunch hits.

“Class is dismissed!” Dr. Lady says from the front, at the same time the cafeteria a floor below them opens, at the same time Finn finally realizes that his shirt has bacne in the form of Fionna’s failed chemistry test, and at the same time as Marshall Lee reminds himself that if he eats, he needs to purge.

* * *

 

“You two never eat anything, did your parents starve you guys as kids?” Bonnie inquires scornfully, and Marshall just snorts at that, while to his side, his older sister Marceline appears discomforted. God he _wishes_ he was starved as a kid- he would’ve grown up with the ability to stave off binges easily and as a natural habit. He pays no mind to Bubblegum however, as he’s aware that his weirdass sister has a violently tense relationship with Bonnie, who he personally finds chill. After all, her last name is legitimately _Bubblegum_ : and she could’ve turned out two ways: a complete dweeb, or one of those white people who were overly obsessed with Japanese or Korean cultures. Apparently neither were even an option. She turned out to be that upperclassmen who smoked out the entire bathroom with mustard gas that she (illegally, most _definitely_ illegally) obtained after hearing Ash screaming at Marshall in the bathrooms. It was pretty cool of her to flush Ash out after storming into the boy’s bathroom (though Marshall _didn’t_ need saving and he could’ve easily handled Ash on his own) dragging Marshall out and deciding to abuse her power as president of the student council to do what she wanted. It ended with him not getting in trouble for once, and Ash given detention due to Marshall’s request to make even the consequences lowkey, because a suspension like Bubblegum wanted would’ve definitely stir rumors over the interesting love life between him and Ash. Something he really doesn’t want to deal with again, even though he typically loves attention in forms of good and bad. And he ended up making a badass friend whose popularity normally would have suggested avoiding him (not his weird social class in this dumbass school hierarchy, but him individually because he’s just that much of a purposeful asshole that he literally became his own species in the school, which is pretty dope). So yeah. 10/10 would kill someone for Bubblegum.

Like, seriously: it was pretty cool of Bubblegum, Princess of OOO (convenient acronyms of its full and much too lengthy name) High School, to save his ass from getting suspended again, and actually do more by diverting the detention onto Ash instead of him. Yeah, so she’s pretty chill, unlike her younger brother, who also has a set nickname the same way Bonnie has Bubblegum, except his is humiliating with the opposite energy of awesomeness his older sister possessed.

Bubba.

Sounds like a fucking word in _Wow-wow Wubzy._

Best part- only he calls Brandon Bubblegum ‘Bubba’ even `amongst their fragmented “friend(?)” group. He and that jackass used to be best friends as kids, and it used to be a fond nickname he christened Brandon. Now it just pisses the other off. He’s surprised that Bubba even indulges in his lowly, common citizen presence, much less still sit with him and his sister during lunch. He supposes it’s due to the glue of their disintegrating group: Fionna and Finn, who he and Marcey, as well as the Bubblegum siblings, grown fond of. He knows full well that Bubba and Bonnie could easily find other friends to eat with, especially less controversial ones than him and his sister, and though Marcey doesn’t really have a distinct group or close friends other than Finn and Fionna like him, she’s at least _liked_ by some of the school population- everyone simply considers him as Marcey’s pathetic shadow. A pretty wicked label, if he says so himself. And honestly, he’s pretty grateful for the twins presence: Finn and Fionna are already loved and practically adopted by the entire OOO population, so it’s almost like basking in their celebrity presence by being so close to them. Marshall eats the jealous and condescending expressions that dart to him whenever he’s with one of the twins; he typically doesn’t care about popularity, but if it pisses people who randomly hate him without even knowing him first, then he has no issues with using it to his advantage in that manner.

“You know, you two are already so skinny. Eat more.” Cake says, and Marshall has the urge to flip her off. Something about Catelyn “Cake” pisses him off. She’s overwhelming and dramatic with an annoying, bleeding heart of pure kindness. She’d sit with him if he’s alone, something which he _doesn’t_ need because he doesn’t care much about humany company, even though he knows for a fact that he terrifies her at points due to his temper. And yet she still considers him a friend and trusts him since he’s surprisingly close with Fionna. Her naive, forgiving and motherly nature just sets him off, unlike her counterpart Jake, Finn’s best friend. Marshall loves Jake. Everytime he glances in the jock’s direction, he _knows_ that the boy is probably envisioning tearing him apart like a Twizzler. He just doesn’t trust him or Marcey, and is quite apt in bringing it up while hiding his large, football player stature behind Finn who’s probably twice his size, like a pussy. It’s just that Jake in comparison to Cake is a lot easier to deal with- less emotional baggage.

“Our parents fed us a lot of apples as a kid. So we didn’t starve, we just had a weird affixation with fruit I guess?” Marceline suddenly comments, wrinkling her nose. Marshall vaguely recalls their weird obsession with apples. However, he’s very sure on the fact that the apples came from Mrs. Trunks, their elderly neighbor, and not necessarily willingly, considering how it was seven-year-old Marceline who always snuck into her garden to smuggle back fruits as their single mother grew concerningly unstable to the point where they had to rely on themselves to maintain their wellbeings. And also because Marcey just impulsively steals shit and he’s pretty sure she _liked_ tormenting their poor neighbor with arthritis. Except now, she visits Trunks weekly to help her pick apples and bake pastries, many which end up gifted to them. “So our parents fed us quite a lot of healthy snacks I guess.” Marcey concludes.

“Simone fed me nightmares,” Marshall states flatly. (Marshall now enters an intense anime flashback to when he was five and drunk Simone paraphrased the entire story of _Wall-E_ to him and honestly, damn, he had nightmares to the point where he literally wet his bed. To be fair, Simone was utterly wasted and therefore got confused halfway through as to whether or not _Wall-E_ originally had a happy ending, and deciding to just slurringly invent her own ending where Wall-E died alone floating in space as the human race was doomed due to their own kind. He was five-years-old, and traumatized to the point where at the age of twelve when Marcey forced him to go inside a toy store since she was trapped babysitting him, he cried at the sight of the Disney section in the corner where there was a large cut-out of Wall-E).

“-arshall?”

Fionna’s impatient timbre drags him out by his childhood trauma’s wig and out of his deep cesspools of extremely unhappy memories revolving around robots before tossing him mercilessly onto the shore of reality.

“Uh what?” He sputters, glancing upwards from the table he was seated at. God, why is he here? Sitting in the cafeteria drives him absolutely mad- because he’s sitting so close to available food. He takes relief in the fact that he can’t really afford to waste money on overpriced school meals that are garbage anyways, as these factors offer a sense of restraint against his urge to buy out the entire chip shelf and down over three-thousand calories of fried chips.

 _Don’t think of that-_ he inwardly scorns, as he attempts to relocate his gaze onto Fionna’s pout.

“You looked like you were having bad thoughts, my dude.” She states indifferently, spearing a block of unidentifiable substance from her school-bought meal.

“Yeah. Probably having traumatic flashbacks to his fear of W-” Marcey starts with a wicked grin.

“Marcey has a _Twighlight_ fetish!” Marshall screams out of self-defense to the rest of the table, taking deep satisfaction in Bubblegum’s contortion of dainty features and how Bubba nearly swallow his plastic fork. Across the table, Cat, who Marshall STILL is willing to square up against any day in spite of her unending patience and stupid morals (who even needs those?) is adorning the expression that one would wear if they were told that they were going to be shanked and abandoned in an alleyway without their kidneys.

“Hm. Last that I remembered, I wasn’t the one who tried to stalk Edward Cullen to quote, ‘lick his abs’,” Marcey replies listlessly with a tone that suggests she’s unimpressed by Marshall deadass exposing, though her smirk is now visible amongst her typically set mouth.

“No. That was with Kristen Stewart when it came to you.” Marshall retorts.

“Yeah. Because I have good taste-”

“Can you guys at least sound ashamed for having any interest in _Twilight_?” Bubblegum states flatly from the side. “Everything in that book is a sham! No scientific evidence behind as to why their skin glitters-”

“I think the bloodsucking undead is already scientifically irrational already but go off-” Marshall mumbles.

“Bonnie,” a stiff voice obliterates the light atmosphere, and Marshall lazily averts his gaze from the direction of its source. “I’m heading off, now.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Bubblegum says, undeterred.

Marshall feels his spine click into a rod, his hackles rising as Bubba exits their table from behind him, feeling much too hyperaware of the prince’s presence.

Every time he sits with this flexible group of friends, he’s reminded of their oddity and simply, how they truly don’t belong yet they still remain hovering amongst each other. Everyone loves the blonde, adventurous underclassmen Fionna and Finn (and he supposes that while he’s technically in their year, he’s not really ‘loveable), as well as the royalty- Bonnia and Bubba, who’s known for their family generosity of donating to this school most of its money.

Then there’s he and Marceline, both of them actively explosively dangerous, a ticking time bomb the moment they interact with the royalty. He’s cool with Bonnie. Sure.

But then there’s her arrogant little brother who’s in his grade, with his condescending gaze and constant downing atmosphere. And Marshall knows it’s directed towards him- Bubba is easily humorous and pleasant around Fionna, yet, he’d automatically reprimand Marshall for having a similar carefree attitude a Fionna, for sharing the same humor, for recklessly partaking in adventures that she might’ve even initiated.

As if he was the bad influence on Fionna’s life, though all the things he assumed Marshall corruptively inflicted onto the girl was already there: he didn’t give Fionna her creativity, her impulsive mindset, or brutishly loud mindset. He just amplified it.

And, because unlike Fionna who has a sickeningly obvious crush on the boy, Marshall doesn’t appeal to Bubba. He doesn’t give a shit if the boy has the entire school as his loyal subjects, underneath his control due to his apparently kind and generous image. He just wants to have fun, chill. And apparently, that’s considered rude to Bubba, for not having manners or giving a shit about him.

Bubba has expressed that his image of a kind and helpful leader that shadows his sister who’s her grade’s president, does not extend to Marshall Lee. Simply because Marshall Lee snarks back at his attitude that he bares first towards Marshall’s actions.

“Marshall?”

“Sup?”

“You just killed your juice box.”

Marshall blinks, and glances at his fist clenched around a plastic straw that’s currently in a hole that definitely was not previously manufactured into the orange 100-calorie chocolate milk. Sticky fluid spurts over his knuckles and onto the table from the hole that he repurposed. Whatever. He just made a cooler design: drinking from a straw that’s diagonally stabbed through its tiny milk carton? Sick.

“Oh. Ha. Sorry. Just thinking of something.” Marshall grimaces, though winks in compensation, quickly accepting Cake’s outstretched hand with her napkins, muttering a quick thanks before sopping up the milk.

“Was it your phobia of Wal-”

“Marcey I’m going to Nerf you-”

* * *

“Yeah. Apparently Bubblegum is throwing a party at her house. It’s probably a mansion.” Marcey informs, polishing her prized instrument. Marshall theatrically rolls his eyes. “God, I don’t think I can stand walking into a party where everyone probably loves them. I’d need to be black out wasted first.” She snarls, flopping back down on her ratty bed.

Marshall grunts in agreement. “It’s not like I’d be wanted anyways,” he admits insouciantly, as he stares indecisively at one of the splotchy bananas in the dusty fruit bowl.

His hunger has starved itself into silence, and he honestly thinks the sweetness of the banana would trigger his sensitive acid reflux anyways, but he can’t stand wasting food. He grew up not being able to afford doing so, therefore habit makes him want to at least try and eat as much of their bananas as possible before they bruise into an unappealing mush.

Bananas.

Medium sized.

His eye twitches. 105 calories.

Guilty at letting the food rot to waste yet relieved at convincing himself to not eat it, he grabs his guitar to lock himself in his room and away from the tiny kitchen where if he stayed any longer he’d certainly raid.

“I don’t want to go. It’ll be just like last time.” Marshall says as he opens the door to the bedroom he and Marcey shared since they were young. Perhaps it’s strange for siblings of opposite genders to sleep in the same room on the same king-sized bed, but they don’t have another mattress other than the one for Simone and adorns too many suspicious alcohol stains for him to touch without thinking he has AIDS or the bubonic plague, and he grew up sleeping next to Marcey anyways (his Wall-E fear haunted him at night and prevented him from sleeping with Simone when he was a child). Besides, usually neither of them are at home at night, since Marcey crashes with her bandmates, and while he used to drop by Ash’s for the night, now he gets the bed to himself.

He steps aside, and lets Marcey in. “I mean. You just cause trouble at parties, even though everyone is an ass to you. But you instilling fear into others for the sake of laughs isn’t helping either.”

He groans. “That one time Pepper threw up was definitely unintentioned, I was joking, I wasn’t actually going to fill her sinuses with spiders. Like. That’s not even possible! I didn’t think anyone with a brain could take that seriously!”

“I mean. No one thought you were going to set Lenny’s carpet on fire that one party but you did to prove a point.”

He keeps silent on that because that _did_ happen, and he didn’t feel sorry about it afterwards either. He just tunes his old guitar. He has no idea how Marcey got him such a gift for his twelfth birthday, and he’s guessing prostitution or underground organ selling, but not of her organs. Thus, he supposes that latter option must have ‘murder’ tacked with it too.

“I guess I really shouldn’t go. If I actually make the Bubblegums mad,” he hesitates. He’s not afraid of shit, especially over people whose influence and power mostly spawns from money and popularity. But, his mind is literally throbbing as he hears Fionna’s desperate wails if the Bubblegums stop sitting with them because he ‘fucks up’. And he knows that’ll happen- every party that he crashed for kicks involved him terrorizing whatever of his school population has appeared. After all, everyone hates him already, and he craves the title of being that hot asshole that people typically see him as. However, with the Bubblegums there, the overly righteous defenders of their classmates in an oddly pretentious manner thinking that they’re just everyones’ white knight, would definitely conflict with his typical schedule and his patience.

This party would definitely be crammed with the prince’s little servants like some kingdom, and while he can stand glares spawned from buried fear or mistrust, but to have leers and sneers that are _condescending,_ as if Marshall Lee would ever give a fuck about their irrelevant opinions that are biased against him because everyone knows the only person Bubba can’t ever cooperate with is _him_ , is a dangerous and unstable concoction of emotions bubbling and boiling over.

He can’t stand people thinking it’s his fault that he and Bubba don’t get along. He _tried_ before.

And they just didn’t click, and it’s frankly no one elses’ business, but it is everyone’s since it’s their beloved prince who he’s “conspiring” against.

He can sense bloodshed if he goes. His temper, Bubba’s irrationality, and everyone elses’ judgemental words and actions is a recipe for _someone’s_ expulsion (and hint! It definitely won’t be the lovable Prince of Oo!), probably an electrocuted microwave, and a spray-deoderant flamethrower (of course, this third result could be any creative weapon, denatured wire coat hanger is another popular one- this third result is very flexible in terms of possibilities!).

“Hey.”

Marshall turns around at his sister’s gentle tone; she definitely wants something and if it’s money he’s going to cut the soles of her heeled wedges. “We should go. Show the snobs that we don’t give a crap about what they think.” She suggests with a snarky streak of grinning teeth.

Marshal echoes her enthusiasm poorly with a dry laugh. “I mean. I want to, but I honestly don’t think I can get through that night without acting on my homicidal urges,” he jokes. _Yeah- ‘jokes’._

“What? Afraid of the calories of one bottle of beer?” Marcey taunts, and he snorts.

It’s fucked up. How they realized that they both developed an eating disorder and are well aware of how self-destructive their behavior is, but both of them are quite unwilling to let go their protruding hip bones and concave stomach.

Especially not him.

Not after last year. (Damn is he getting dramatic sob story flashbacks at the moment to last year when his stomach wasn’t flat, his thighs touching and his upper arms flabby. Bad times, man.)

“Fuck off, Marcey.  I saw your expression when Finn offered you that chocolate milk. If you can’t handle brown cow juice, what about the good stuff?”

“If you say ‘brown cow juice’ in reference to chocolate milk again, I will break your kneecaps.”

* * *

 

“I can’t believe we’re actually here.”

“Yeah. I didn’t think a loser like you would ever leave your room.”

Marshall contemplates murder for the fifth time that day, but ultimately decides against it, as he sees Finn and Fionna approach them with glittering eyes and quirked eyebrows. “Underaged brats. What the heck are they doing here?” Marcey snarls, exasperation contorting her smirk into a grimace. Though Marshall is well aware of her soft-spot for Finn that she’s constantly embarrassed about, he thinks that even with it she’s overreacting. Then he takes a glance towards Fionna with her Chesire grin, and with a sharp throb of his heart he easily decides that Fionna should not be here and that damn those two need to _go home_ and watch cartoons and eat Frosted Flakes or some shit.

“Bubba invited us!” Fionna chirrups as Marshall jerks the jittering twins aside.

“To a senior party?” Marcey hisses. “Marshy-” Marshall scowls at how Marcey coos her old nickname for him that should’ve been buried along with his thirteenth birthday, but doesn’t intervene as concern for his classmate overrides his need to fucking fight his sister. “Is allowed here, because he’s a corrupt little shit-”

“Marce, you’re too mean-” Fionna pouts, and his stomach cramps from the odd emotional concoction of betrayal towards Fionna’s expressed kindness because he’s a _badass_ and doesn’t need her to try and defend him against a relatively harmless jab from his bitchass sis, that’s combatting with gratitude and excitement at Fionna’s defensiveness over him.

“No, it’s deserved.” Finn states, though his eyes are pointedly averted from Marshall’s gaze. He inwardly snickers. Finn has always been scared of Marshall, in spite of his twin’s apparent adoration for him.

“Yeah, it is.” Marcey agrees. “Anyways, you two shouldn’t be here. There are creeps here-”

“I’m pretty sure _we’re_ considered the creeps-” Marshall mutters.

“But it’s Bubba!” Fionna chitters, and Marshall resists the urge to dig someone’s spinal cord out of their back and crack it like a whip (preferably Bubba, because _what is that dumbass thinking, inviting the twins over._ Sure they’re all juniors and typically Marshall doesn’t give a shit what other people do and likes Fionna to make her own decisions without him dogging her, but having them near alcohol?). He legitimately does not understand Fionna’s blatant crush for the arrogant jackass, and her affixation to his dumbass science experiments that don’t even include explosions. “Bubba wouldn’t drink alcohol, he’s a good kid.”

“Are you inferring I’m not?” Marshall theatrically gapes, and ignores Fionna’s narrowed eyes towards what he’s implying, though she simply settles with a physical jab to the shins rather than a verbal one.

(He wonders if her fingers would run along his jutted bones like braille if she did decide to bruise him with a painful smack. A flame of desire for someone to notice, to notice his sharp edges and progress flares and he realizes he _wants_ Fionna’s coarse fingers to take notice of the fact that they could nearly caress against his bones, whose only barrier against the pads of her digits is a thin layer of skin, but he suppresses that want because that’s legitimately _fucking weird.)_

“I- Fionna.” Marceline scoffs, carding aside a thick curtain of hair. “That Pepsi Bismo’s dad literally owns an alcohol company.” Marshall snickers. There’s nothing wrong with the Bubblegum’s obsession with the color pink (obsession to the point where both of the siblings’ hair is dyed a bright shade of flamingo pink), but he still likes the mocking nicknames that he could concoct for Bubba due to his ability to wear twenty-two various shades of pink all at once.  “Fionna,” Marceline looks very close to throttling the blonde. “When they call his family’s company the kingdom of sugar, it’s in reference to the how alcohol is made through fermented sugar.” She groans, and Marshall cocks an eyebrow at his sister’s specific knowledge. “The Bubblegums probably grew up _pissing_ alcohol, you know. Therefore, both of you are _not_ allowed in.”

“But Marce, Bonnie’s going to be there-” Finn gripes as his twin screeches in unison with:

“But Bubba personally invited us-!”

Marshall feels as if his impatience is rising at the same level as the twos’ voice pitches.

“No!” Marceline hisses, and even he flinches at the hard glare that frosts over her vortexing black eyes, and the way that her lips wrinkle back to reveal two rows of glittering teeth.

At least he gets to enjoy the twos’ reactions- Finn promptly dies, and he’s pretty sure Fionna instinctively smacked her jerked leg before crumpling. She fucking died too, he guesses.

“Great. Homicide. Two bodies.” Marshall snorts as Marceline rounds to him, her face reverting back to her natural countenance of nonchalance.

“Three, if you continue talking.” She states factually, picking at the end of her chipped nail polish. “Hurry up before someone mistakes you for a serial killer. Seriously, next time, don’t wear all black. At least try not to look like someone who’s still trapped in their 2010, MCR emo phase.”

“Bitch,” he scoffs, but shrugs on his checkered flannel that was tied around his waist, over his typical black t-shirt.

“And now you look like a hipster goth who goes to indistinct library cafes to brag about how they drink black coffee like it’s a superpower before crying about their daddy issues.”

“At least I don’t have a crush on the embodiment of Pinky Pie from _My Little Pony_.” He retorts as they make it to the top of the hill. Yeah. His sister, thinking she’s slick. While Bonnie’s badass cool, Marshall literally has no idea how Marcey fell for her considering how their relationship is as sadistically cruel as the one between them and their social worker who constantly attempts to get into their house for the past six years to find evidence that'd separate him (a minor) from Marcey (also a minor; fun!). Only difference between those relationships is that if Bubblegum wanted to get into their house, she’s getting into the fucking house.

He makes it to the bottom by tucking into a roll after Marceline puts the thicc sole of her boot against his back.  



	2. fadksj

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marshall Lee arrives at the party, and engages in a conversation with Bubba.
> 
> That's literally it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UH sorry if this is sorta slow? i already have the next chapter planned out and it's. wild i guess. but i don't know if my characters are like. ooc. so please tell me if so! i'm like. trying to imagine how marceline and marshall's relationship would play out, and i'm not entirely sure if what i'm shooting for is what people typically have in mind, but it's sort of this "you dumb bitch ily you hoe" relationship ya feel?
> 
>  
> 
> also i don't support slut-shaming i don't know why i felt the need to say that, but at one point in this chapter marshall's like: "oh. my internal atTENTION-WHORE won't sHUT UP" and i just want to clarify whores and sluts are not derogatory here, i just love referring to myself as one and i sorta just projected my entire mindset and 2017 internet slang (oops) onto marshall lee somewhere along the way so please tell me if it's ooc or sorta just. try-hard/cringy.

“Whoa, this party is surprisingly wild, considering the hosts.” Marshall states, as he enters the house. Everything appears relatively  _ normal _ : no seizure-inducing strobe lights, giant DJ set-up pounding R Kelley before that artist is booed off track, and no scent of vomit. Yet. 

There’s no one dancing either- instead, there are various but multiple groups of people holding the stereotypical red Solo cups everywhere, with the  _ giant  _ (like, big-dick-energy-giant) television currently playing some movie he’s never seen before but is clearly popular considering how there are probably more than fifty kids crowded around the four couches settled in the huge ass living room (this one room is probably larger than Bubba’s ego). 

He nearly trips over a still body splayed on the floor, and he has to duck to prevent two people who slam against the wall he smacks against. He hears disgustingly loud smacking noises from above as he dodges the initiating make-out corner.

At least some things are normal.

“Wild? This is literally a nursing home.” Marceline states, an eyebrow quirked, conveying unarousement. 

“Mean.” Marshall scoffs. “Well. I mean. I guess I expected wild party games and that sort of thing. I don’t really know what to do.” He finally admits, glancing over at Marceline, who also appears slightly lost.

However, he notes the disdainful expressions contorting the features of a few nearby students, who quickly glance away when he claps eyes with them. At least that confirms they’re not entirely lost: they’re still the same, hateful people from school.

Knowing full well that they’re not going near the bar or kitchen, he slowly fixates his attention on the playing movie. 

“Oh, glad you two could make it. Even though I’m pretty sure neither of you two were invited.” A voice says near his ear. Marshall, though he’s usually attracted in murderous rage to the source of that voice, continues to stare through the dim room at the movie. 

“Yeah, you’re welcome. Seriously, it’s gracious of us to purify this place with our presence in case if it started smelling like mothballs and meatloaf.” Marceline chirps, successfully recapturing Marshall’s attention.

“Marshall Lee. Nice to see you here.” Great. Guess he now really can’t just pretend as if he hasn’t seen the host.

He finally detaches his gaze from the direction of the movie, before looking over to see Bubba and his stupidly blank countenance that’s definitely expressing passive aggressiveness; because Bubba never looks at anyone else with such apathy. He then looks at the two cups in the riot’s hands. 

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Marshall replies indifferently, ignoring Bubba’s obvious displeasure at his response. 

“Here. I’m sure you two are party animals, so-” Bubba hisses, thrusting his two hands out, and Marshall blinks. “Don’t worry. Not poisoned. But yes, it’s family brewed- so only the best in OOO, really.” Bubba reassures with a tight smile.

“Spit doesn’t necessarily equate to poison,” Marshall mutters dryly, hot satisfaction warming him slightly at how the red Solo cup crumples slightly in Bubba’s grip that must’ve tightened in a reaction to Marshall. “Like you wouldn’t spit in my cup.”

“Or make one of his weird potions,” Marceline murmurs, eyeballing teh cup.

_ Oh, so we’re both stalling _ . Steeling his nerves, Marshall accepts the cup, watching as his sister hesitantly do the same. They could just dump out the alcohol once Bubba leaves. 

But, because Bubba is  _ inconvenient _ and literally the scorn to  _ everything _ Marshall does much less breathes, he doesn’t fucking leave and instead gestures towards the drinks. “Bottoms up.” Pink Panther’s doppelganger says. 

“Damn, now I know there’s something in here.” Marceline whispers loudly, and Marshall snorts, grinning at Bubba’s anger flinches through his impassiveness. “But thanks for the drink.” She says. 

Marshall swirls the dark drink. Alcohol = same metabolic pathway as fat = he’s fucking doomed with a shitty metabolism and high rate of calorie storage if he drinks this shit. 

Damn.

“So, you two gonna drink or-” Bubba inquires. Marshall wrinkles his nose- how pretentious does one gotta be to get offended over someone not drinking their shit? He glances upwards at Bubba, and realizes that the walking eraser is glaring solely at him, Marceline not even in the direction of his glower. 

Oh. So he has a problem with  _ Marshall  _ not accepting his fucking drink.

He opens his mouth, ready to bite out a sharp and witty remark that’d earn him a burning slap from Fionna once Bubba snitches because he’s a  _ rat _ who loves to blame their tense relationship on Marshall, but Marceline beats him to it.

“I’m this idiot’s ride. Designated driver, ya feel,” she excuses smoothly. “Meanwhile, brat here-” He disregards Bubba’s snide grin. Marceline always cracks shit on him because he’s her little brother, so how dare the bastard act as if Marshall would even take offense from something from Marcey. “Has never drank-”

He wasn’t expecting that. Sputtering after his sister who floats away with a cackle, he rounds towards Bubba whose eyebrows arch upwards to complete a shocked visage.

“You’ve never drank?”

“What?” He responds boredly, swirling the drink in his cup. The calories always restricted him from drinking, and honestly, the weird smell of alcohol is a good enough factor to keep him from it. “I like to keep my mind clear.”

“Your mind is always empty-” He ignores that, and intervenes.

“And besides it’s more fun to watch others get drunk, and I can only do that sober.” Marshall clicks his free hand into a gun in spite of Bubba’s unimpressed expression. 

“Can’t hold your liquor, more like it.” Bubba mutters. And since Marshall doesn’t have low standards, he doesn’t feel remotely insulted by something so petty and dumb.

“You wouldn’t know that. And who cares if I can or not?” he states passively. Clearly Bubba wasn’t expecting such a response, considering how he flushes after a moment of hesitation from being dumbfounded. “Didn’t take you to be the type to shame others for something they can’t help-”

His insouciance melts into acerbic sarcasm, acid spitting out between his teeth now at that last sentence.

And staring at Bubba’s hardened countenance of obvious annoyance, condescending and so damn arrogant, Marshall knows that no matter how academically intelligent Bubba could be, he’s too shallow in the brainpan, too dumb, too oblivious and too privileged with a likeable family, genuinely kind personality that deluded his gullible and dumb mind into thinking he can’t do anything wrong, that he’s the epitome of  _ perfect _ , and that he won’t ever stray from his stubborn stance that Marshall is never the victim.

“Who cares if I can drink?” 

Bubba.

Too shallow, too naive, too far up his ass to probably connect Marshall’s anger to Bubba’s overall harmless yet purposefully scornful remarks meant to defend him from Marshall’s own provocating comments from last year on how Marshall gained weight, that ended up completely offensive. 

Bitterly, some dark, disgustingly attention-whorish part of him curdles in his empty stomach, on what Bubba would think if he knew he influenced Marshall into his eating-behaviors now. 

In complete honesty, his habits aren’t even that bad, it’s not like no one goes on a diet or starves themselves in highschool. And it hasn’t really isolated him from society- he goes out to eat with his friends: he never ate much anyways as a kid, so it’s not like Fionna or Finn really cared if he never bought anything to eat with them. But he knows that if Bubba heard of them, even if his habits are relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things, he’d be revolted. (Marshall pretends as if he isn’t aware that if anything, Bubba would be revolted at  _ him _ for being so insecure and slightly messed up from the conventional beauty, but that’s not his problem and if anything, that’s Bubba’s). At least it’s satisfying. It’s disturbingly satiable that Bubba has been that impressionable on Marshall’s eating patterns, since that means he’s been tainted too. In a way, Marshall wins. Because he being is proof that he shattered Bubba’s self-perception on being the kind, school valedictorian who everyone relied on and couldn’t do wrong.

But that sense of orgastic (temporary, pleasurable for a split second) pleasure is easily overrode by his paranoia over Bubba, or anyone for that matter, finding out he had an  _ eating problem.  _ He already hates that Marcey knows- though it’s not that bad, since the two of them actually benefit with each other knowing since now they barely make dinner, they don’t buy fatty groceries (or anything at all) or products without calories on its packaging.

“Marshall Lee, I don’t get your problem-”

“I don’t get yours!” He responds hotly, recalling that he’s in the middle of a party, where most likely their heated argument attracted outliers, and that he’s holding a cup filled with singing yellow ambrosia racking up to a hundred-and-fifty calories, that he’s fucking sweaty in his flannel, that he’s never seen a fucking damn movie in his life, and that he  _ hates _ it here.

He should’ve never came.

_ “Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?” _

Started by the loud and unfamiliar voice, he whirls around, abandoning Bubba to angrily choke on his responses, he quickly locates the source of it. It’s the movie, and someone’s turning it up.

Said person turning it up is holding the middle finger.

Said middle finger is definitely meant for Marshall.

He does a quick 180 and determines that everyone within the one mile radius is staring at Marshall and Bubba with obvious disgust (at least this time half of the heavy atmosphere can be split and blamed on Bubba, even though definitely no one meant it for him). They might’ve been a little loud- louder than the movie itself.

Enraptured by the screen of two different men, one of them wearing a blue suit that Marshall definitely recognizes on toys of the  _ Marvel _ franchise, he watches as the dark-haired man replies with:

_ “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.” _

That shakes an unexpected bark of laughter out his lungs that were still fluttering from previous anger. “Yo, dude, what’s this movie?” He turns to Bubba, determined to constantly catch the male off guard by constantly reverting back to a passive mood, because though last month he would’ve considered coming after Bubba with a crowbar and clogging the toilet just as vomiting hour begins-

He realizes that he could be temporarily sated through a flustered Bubba who stumbles over responding to Marshall’s sudden indifference to his godawful attitude, and doing this means he doesn’t set anything on fire to alleviate burning anger, which is good since that means he stops disappointing Fionna once more.

“Uh. One of the Iron Man movies, I don’t know which though.” Bubba shrugs jerkily, his lips stil pursed into an obvious grimace.

Marshall blinks. “Oh. Coolio.”

He ignores how Bubba squints judgmentally and mouths  _ ‘coolio’ _ with obvious confusion at Marshall’s choice of words.

Seriously.

Bubba is skating on thin fucking ice. There is absolutely  _ nothing _ wack about using ‘coolio’, and he has fucking scientific evidence if Einstein really wants to have a go.

However, plastering his unbothered personality over his currently dying one that has homicidal urges, he continues talking. “I never watched a movie.”

Silence greets his statement, and honestly, Marshall fucking agrees because damn what the  _ fuck _ was up with that. Glancing nervously back down over his shoulder to take a sneak at Bubba’s face, he figures that his inner-emotions must twin with the shock painting the boy’s features. “I don’t know why I told you that.” Marshall admits. “But. If I’m going to watch a movie, I think I want to watch this one.” He shrugs nonchalantly, though he knows his shoulder blades are tense and that his voice, though passable as okay, still has two distinct cracks of hesitation that is the model example of a hormonal boy just entering puberty who was caught looking through their dad’s porn by their sister.

“Catch you later-” Marshall clears his throat, because he wants out  _ now _ , and if he goes to sit by the movies there’s no way Skittles here, could bother him without causing a huge commotion, something he’d definitely avoid.

“Wait, you can’t watch it.” Bubba gripes.

Wow. Now, Marshall  _ loves _ pretending as if he’s 2D with absolutely no negative response to someone like Bubba and his  _ dumb _ insults, and playing it off as if he finds all of their opinions irrelevant- but really? Barring him from watching a movie especially when he’s definitely portraying him to be at least temperamentally sane at the moment? 

He’s insulted.

“You have to watch it from the beginning and the first movie too.” Bubba continues.

He blinks with a start.

“I might not like you much, but I’m not going to subject you to watching a trilogy from what’s definitely not the first of the series and not even from the beginning of the movie.” Bubba snorts with a roll of his eyes, and at this, Marshall snickers, unsure of how to proceed in this unidentified territory. It’s not exactly new land, though. He and Bubba always had their good moments, though their bad ones definitely outweigh any positive ones.

“Are you hungry?” Bubba inquires, and Marshall wants to fucking die because both of them are clearly awkward and uncomfortable, and now Bubba is actually putting in minimal effort into playing nice with him, something that neither are very good at reciprocating. Why couldn’t they just walk away? 

“Nah.” He says. “I-” he begins, wanting to excuse himself.

“You sure? Someone bought pizza.” Bubba interjects.

“Someone?” 

“Yeah, I don’t know, I think the pizza deliverer got the wrong building?” Bubba shrugs, his eyebrows wrinkling as his mouth sets in confusion. “But,” he shrugs. “Pizza. And we tipped him a lot, and I think he’s right now maybe over tipsy, having whipped cream eaten off his stomach, and adopted one of our foster dogs, so I think it’ll be fine.”

Marshall mentally thumbs-up at that. Bubba’s a definite dick, but at least the genuinely caring trait of his (even if it made him into an ostentatious jerk) guarantees compensation for the less fortunate’s troubles. This would be a great example of that: some poor pizza deliverer who’s stuck opening doors to high schoolers who are too inebriated to tip him with anything other than wiped toilet paper, now has a new puppy companion, probably lost eight brain cells, and is getting cleaned of whipped cream like a cat. Bubba’s really out here doing God’s work.

“Huh. I’m allergic to whipped cream. And dogs,” he suddenly informs, ignoring how Bubba chokes on an inhale. “Also, I don’t like pizza.” Marshall says simply, at unease. He doesn’t like that Bubba’s attempting to extend a temporary olive branch when he knows that he’s probably doing it so that Fionna doesn’t come after their asses, and if she does, then he’ll have the truthful alibi of being a good citizen™. In conclusion: if either one of them ends up dead, it’ll be Marshall’s fault. Because even if it fortunately does end up the other dude’s cadaver slouched over the couch and bludgeoned to death with a showerhead, at least there are witnesses seeing Bubba attempting to get  _ gasp _ , Marshall Lee to choke down greasy ass (probably around than four-hundred calories) slices of pizza! And therefore, like Situation 1, Fionna will say it’s his fault that someone ended up dead (even if that someone  _ deserves _ it) and he’s going to find himself shanked in the middle of a night with a Hello Kitty umbrella.

“You don’t like pizza? But last year I remember you really liked the one with mushrooms? Which is  _ gross _ , but still-” Bubba states, suspicion highlighting his voice, but Marshall doesn’t focus on that.

All he fixates on is that Bubba  _ must _ be mocking him; that all though he’s slim, fluctuating around 120lbs or 54.43 kilograms, that  _ even though he’s at a BMI of 17.2 at the height of 5’10 of 178cm of whatever fucking measurement is out there he’s underweight- _ Bubba still mentions last year. Last year when Marshall was stupid and binged and overate thinking that he’d stop and that he’d go back to his original stick self as he stretched his clothes and could no longer fit into skinny jeans for around seven months, before he realized that he had to change because his appearance mattered.

That though he knows skinny isn’t synonyms with beauty, it’s still the strict and conventional beauty standard. 

Marshall fucking  _ knows  _ he’s barely tolerable. He wonders if people wouldn’t fear him as much or bother with his crusty personality if he wasn’t at least hot. Of course, he knows that Fionna and Bonnie are somehow always there for him, but what if he wasn’t  _ hot _ , that he had no appearance to compensate for his admittedly unpleasant attitude (no, it’s his whole damn ass personality) at times. He wonders if Bubba’s image of him being a lazy slacker who does nothing but get in trouble would just worsen if he wasn’t skinny.

He’s skinny now.

_ So why is Bubba doing this why is he bringing last year up why hasn’t his image of me slightly improved this isn’t  _ FAIR-

“So...I’m guessing no pizza?” 

He glances down at the crushed cup in his fist, where alcohol sloshes over his knuckles and through the vertical slits of the crumpled plastic. Bubba stares at it with death and sleep deprivation in his eyes. 

“That’s an overreaction.” He deadpans. 

Internally  _ dying _ , Marshall pretends as if everything going  _ great _ and that Bubba didn’t just have suspicious (and positively  _ dickish) _ undertones towards his body image. “No pizza.” He echoes.

“You never eat. You used to a lot though-”  _ God so everyone noticed I was stuffing my face last year. Wow. Great. Guess I’ll die _ . “You now never eat. You should eat more.”

“I eat.” He snaps, wincing slightly at his rigid tone that contrasts Bubba’s mockingly indifferent one. “I eat a lot.” He says, acid burning his tongue at that lie. The thing is, he doesn't  _ want _ people to even remotely think he works hard for anything, even though he hates implying that he eats anything at all to others, who would probably judge him if he ate a lot. 

He just. Wants everyone to be jealous of him being so flawlessly perfect, of being skinny, of achieving good grades and high courses without any work. He needs the envy from others believing he’s naturally skinny (though last year tarnished that perception, he’s sure), and additionally he’s just naturally intelligent and skilled. He wants that image projected, it’s the most impressive one he could conjure of himself. Though, such a persona would definitely piss off people like Bubba who apparently can’t stand someone else being as extensively lucky when god decided to fuck with their genetic code. He just  _ wants _ to be seen as effortlessly good at things without studying or without exercising and starving and purging and-

He quickly shoots his plastic cup into the trashcan across the room to give his quivering hands something to do.

“Pizza?” He chokes down disgust. It’s just one pizza.  _ It won’t affect me _ . He disregards how the other day he binged on chips and was barely able to cough out more than a third of what he fucking ate into the toilet. 

His stomach is flat. Does he want to ruin his progress?

But if he freely eats pizza, then it’ll at least prove to everyone that he’s not the type to worry about his weight, and that he just happens to have a supernatural metabolism that maintains his thigh gap, prominent collarbones and hard jawline. That he’s skinny without trying, that he can eat whatever he wants and isn’t tied down by any weakness.

“I guess I am a little hungry.” He grits. “I’ll have one.”

_God I am such a_ stupid bitch _. I will_ regret _and_ HATE _myself if I binge-_ and like a dumbass, Marshall Lee screams over his thoughts (at a very concerned Bubba, who is startled by the ~~gradually~~ sudden and wild rise in volume of Marshall's voice) with: "yeah, I'll have a slice of a pizza!" Because fuck his body! Who cares? Certainly not him.   



	3. zrset5dy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> marshall regrets life, including his ex boyfriend.
> 
> Ash really needs to use the bathroom. he adapts.
> 
> marceline finds it funny to leave her brother with bubba because he's a little shit who can't properly deal with his anger and emotions therefore lashes out at bubba, who doesn't deal with peoples' bULLshit.
> 
> bubba finds himself "breaking up" a fight in his own bathroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have NO idea whatt he FUCK is going on

 

Marshall finds himself waving off his concerns and his blaring alarms as he downs the greasy and hot strings of cheese dangling off the sides of the bell pepper and mushroom pizza. He’ll fast for the next two days or whatever. He’ll just waggle two fingers down his throat and let everything come back up in the next two minutes before he properly digests the food. It’ll be fine. Whatever.

He reaches for another slice.

“See, you used to eat like this during lunch. Now you don’t.” Bubba says from the side, grabbing a Styrofoam cup full of nachos.

At that statement, Marshall’s willpower that seems to conveniently  _ only _ ever come out of shame of eating so much in the presence of others who are probably judging how much he’s eating, nearly makes him set down the slice. Almost. (He wishes he did). However, he decides that it’ll be fine. Though, Bubba’s off-handed comment shakes the core of his indifference to how he’s fucking up his calorie count at the moment.

“Well, I don’t get hungry easily. I usually eat before school.” He says. “Big breakfast.”

“You’re simply implying that you live off of Lucky Charms.”

“Okay, even if I did, do you have a fucking issue with my Lucky Charms diet?”

At this, Bubba just shakes his head slowly. Marshall folds the pizza and shoves a huge chunk into his mouth. “You’ve really never seen a movie?” Bubba suddenly says, surprising Marshall. Why is he even still here? They’re not friends, and in fact, both have a mutual understanding that for everyone’s safety, it’s best if they remain apart with a five-mile radius between them. Safety precautions. “No movies. Huh. Don’t know if that’s you being edgy or just sad-” Marshall chokes on his pizza at his habitual urge to scream in retort. “What about as a kid?”

Marshall shrugs, eating more of the slice to keep his mouth occupied so that Bubba wouldn’t expect an answer. “Huh. I’m planning on asking Fiona to go see a movie that’s coming out next week.”

Marshall quickly extinguishes the flare of hot jealousy that had smoked the oxygen out of him, leaving him choking for air.

Or maybe the unusual heat disturbing the constant coldness of his body is because he’s getting heartburn from eating so much pizza at once.

Both seem likely. He is a rather emotionally and physically unstable being rolled into a single blunt. 

“I think Bonnie is coming too. You should come.”

This night was weird enough, with him holding casual conversation in a public space with Bubba. Now, he  _ knows  _ his dumb ass had officially accidentally relocated his identity and existence into a separate realm, and deleted the original copy of the universe and himself forever. Like he’s in Minecraft or some shit. “I’m sorry what.” He monotones.

Then, he notes the awkward harshness ironing Bubba’s expression down, smoothing out any wrinkles. Clearly, he’s pressed over this as well. Why even offer then? “Don’t ask me something if you don’t want to do it.” Marshall elaborates almost challengingly. 

“Look. Fiona just. Wants us to get along some more, okay.” Bubba snaps. “And she’s one of my best friends, I’m going to at least try.” he fumes.

Like that, it somehow curbs Marshall’s binge, and he finishes off the crust, wiping the pizza grease onto a nearby napkin, now left with familiar anger rearranging his goddamn intestines along with the sudden overhanging depression that follows whenever he binges.

Bubba. Fucking dumbass. Thinking that Marshall really didn’t try, that he really didn’t give a damn. It’s not Bubba’s fault that they happen to not click. However, it’s certainly not his either, that Bubba literally interprets everything Marshall does as sketchy or an attack on him, that everything he says is shallow to not have any real depth or emotional substance behind them. 

And what he hates more, is that he’s acting as if Fiona’s not his best friend either, and that he wouldn’t fucking shank a bitch for her. Would Bubba cross legal limits to help Fiona hide a body? Yeah, he doesn’t fucking think so.

“Next time, make your offer genuine.” Marshall snarls, tossing the crumpled, grease-blotted napkin at the brat, not bothering to get a glimpse of the man’s expression as he stalks off. 

He’s finding the bathroom.

* * *

Marshall Lee already knew he hit rock bottom when he found himself attempting to throw up Salt and Vinegar chips in the school bathroom.

So really, him ready to go down on his two fingers to try and purge up the last two slices of pizza in someone else’s personal bathroom isn’t that much of a shocker.

What is a damn shocker though, is his ex-boyfriend shoving the door open on Marshal Lee, with his fucking two fingers slick from saliva dyed in the same shade of cat piss and melted pepperoni that’s  encasing pizza chunks, leaning over the pristine toilet in the huge-ass bathroom, with tears tightening his skin faster than one of Marcey’s clay masks could ever.

He was spending the last five minutes desperate and struggling to agitate his gag reflex, and seeing Ash come in, his pants half unbuckled and his face screwed up, causes an entire acidic lump of  _ disgustANG _ to projectile vomit into his hand, and into the toilet below. 

Gathering up the excessive saliva pooling in his mouth, he quickly spits it into the dissolving cloud of bile below. “What the fuck-” he chokes the words through cobwebs spun from stomach acid and melted cheese clotting his throat.

“Too late!” Ash shrieks.

Marshall pretends as if his ex isn’t taking a piss in the Bubblegum’s family marble sink. 

And it’s not like Ash wasn’t aware that Marshall had some “odd” eating habits. If anything, Ash seemed to encourage it. “How did you get in?” Marshall inquires hoarsely, realizing he has to wash gunk off his hands before attempting to gag up some more (call it strange, but he finds it absolutely unsanitary to stick his fingers back down his throat before rinsing off the previous muck, even though they’d end up being caked in vomit seconds later anyways). Unfortunately, some dick is aiming his dick into the sink. Unashamedly, too.

He wrinkles his nose. This is a very surreal situation, and considering how it’s his first time seeing anyone, even stranger his ex, naked, everything has a weird quirky sense of normalcy. God he hates it; it makes him feel as if there’s something obscenely wrong but he can’t just place his finger on it.

Right. So.

His ex is butt naked and taking a very and growingly concerningly long pee. In his current source of utter disdain’s excessively fancy sink. At a party. In his stickler-for-rules acquaintance’s house. While being caught by said ex, purging into the equally ‘I-don’t-speak-broke’ toilet. What really completes this modernized Van Gogh illustration, is how the toilet is electronic. One of those Japanese toilets with all the damn buttons that could squirt water up your asshole if you wanted to clean it. Sounds like clickbait, but he guesses not.

Marshall has a feeling it won’t take him much to be convinced that he’s currently in a stimulation.

“So, Marshy, seems to me as if you’re still puking up your lunches?” Ash says, initiating smalltalk, as if he’s currently not holding his penis to aim at the sink, while Marshall isn’t trying to figure out how to get the toilet to spray water so he can wash vomit off his fingers so that he could shove them down his throat again. There’s an unsettling lump of scalding food in the very back of his throat- he needs to get it out. It’s there. He can sense it. And he’s unhappy with it. 

“Ash, seems to me as if you’re still peeing in strangers’ sinks?”

“Bro, this is  _ literally _ the first time you’ve seen me do this.” He can’t believe he was just “bro’d” by an ex who he constantly gets into physical and verbal fights with (even when they were dating), while sometimes having actually pretty peaceful moments hanging out with.

“Are you inferring you’ve actually done this more than once?”

“Well,  _ someone’s _ taking up the sink. What do you want me to do? Water the Bubblegum’s two-thousand dollar rug?”

"Hey. If you're going to be like a dog, then better act like one." Marshall mutters sourly.

* * *

“Where’s Marshall?” 

“I don’t know,” Brandon confesses.

“Bubba-” Brandon pretends as if this isn’t happening right now, and that Marceline did  _ not _ just utilise that pathetic nickname from Marshall against him. He only has tolerance for Fiona who says it in a positive, animated way. The Abedeer siblings are more sketchy on their rights. “Look. Marshall is a dumbass who literally cannot be left alone unsupervised. C’mon, do you know where he is?”

Bubba finds himself appealing more to Marceline the moment she affectionately labeled Marshall as a ‘dumbass’, even though he’s personally not fond of swears. While he’s found Marshall to be more expressively remorseful in comparison to his older, equally prideful yet more emotionally conservative sister, his sister is rational and simply not the spawn of Satan: so by default she wins. “Yeah, okay I’ll look for him. Just. Stay here for now,” he gestures, sighing as he stands up. He doesn’t want Marceline creeping through his house, and frankly, it concerns him that a kid with the personality of a crackhead is out of his sight for so long anyways. Of course, it’s not like he  _ wanted  _ to be around Marshall, who clearly doesn’t want to be around him and is so quickly defensive and accusatory against him, that prejudiced brat, but he legitimately doesn’t put it past him and his infamous temper to break into his personal room and trash it. 

He doesn’t want to genuinely think Marshall could do something as invasive and wack as that, but then again, it’s  _ Marshall Lee _ , whose irrationally intense and highly unstable emotions is basically a whole-ass character trait. So he sets down his drink, decides that he needs to stop sulking (especially due to someone like  _ Marshall _ ), and that as the host of this party, he shouldn’t look like he finds his own damn party a bust.

“Brandy!”

A short and comfortingly familiar presence bounds next to him.

“Pepper,” he groans theatrically. “I’m trying to find Edgelord here before he raises Madagascar hissing cockroaches in my mattress.” He states to the redhead.

“Oddly specific. Is Edgelord referring to…”

“My uninvited guests who still ended up here? The male one? Yes.” He flatly responds to the unspoken question. He does feel slightly bad for grouping Marceline with her brother though- he knows her reputation isn’t the best, and he isn’t entirely fond of her, but he doesn’t want to kill and hang her for a witch like Jake does. For her little brother, that’s left unsaid due to legal matters. “Anyways-”

“WHOO-!”

Bubba feels Satan attempt to rip his spine out of his mouth and crack it like a whip when he feels a kid body slams into him.

“Oh my god-” he flinches, hearing faint screaming that suspiciously sounds like Pepper in the background of his blurring vision. He jackknifes up from the floor that he was knocked down against. “Lumps, what the  _ hell _ are you doing?” He grunts, blinking rapidly since his vision is basically the quality of an Android at this moment.

“Nothing, just grabbing Lemons to show him the fight that’s going on in your bathroom-”

“The  _ what-” _

“Uh, yeah, Marshall? You recall?” Lumps scoffs, spittle flying from their mouth as they impatiently shove Brandon aside. “He’s either sucking Ash’s dick, or he’s biting it off. Both are good enough to make it on YouTube-”

_ “WHAT-” _

 

He throws open the door, his face contorting into a grimace as he makes sure Pepper’s vision would be indefinitely blocked behind his body, because if he ends up seeing something that scars him for life, he definitely doesn’t need Pepper to share that suffering with him.

Oh.

“Oh, okay, this is fine. It’s just a normal fight.” he describes aloud, his eyes flickering from the shiner swelling across Marshall’s left eye, and the blood dribbling out Ash’s painfully blushing nose.

Then he sees that Ash isn’t wearing any pants.

“Never mind.”

 

After escorting Pepper out the bathroom, and locking the door behind him (he was literally in cold sweats as that happened because he does  _ not _ want to be a part of whatever the hell this is-), he rounds to Marshall and Ash (did he even invite the latter? Hol’ up. He didn’t invite  _ either _ one of them what sort of  _ bullshittery-  _ Bubba takes a hot second to realize that he somehow overcame his disdain for swears, which he typically deems immature, because of  _ Marshall Fucking Lee _ ). The two however, whether or not they’re actually aware of his presence, clearly are still out for blood since currently, Marshall’s face is slammed into his sink.

“Yeah,  _ lick _ the inside of the sink Marshall Leech-!”

Brandon always knew Ash was that one weird sadistically kinky kid. “Ash!” He snaps, watching in cold satisfaction as Ash glances at him, beaming cheerfully. At least he knows Ash won’t try and cave his skull in with a metal bat. Always a confidence-booster.

“Oh, hey Bubba!”  _ Why is everyone using that nickname now. _ He’s going to legalize murder over this. “Just teaching this little  _ shit _ a lesson.”

“By deforming his skull on the edge of my sink? You know my father could end up responsible as this is my family’s property, right?” Brandon summarizes, utterly unimpressed. He doesn’t  _ like _ Marshall, but he’s not fond of physical punishment, especially since though he wants to punch Marshall so hard that his tongue bruises sometimes, Marshall doesn’t deserve it. “Wait. You’re trying to punish him by making him lick the inside of sink. How does that…” he could surely see how that could be humiliating or disgusting, but Marshall Lee would probably tongue the inside of a toilet bowl for five bucks so he doesn’t see how this affects the said victim. Then, he sees the absolutely dead look radiating from Marshall, whose cheek is hugging the porcelain bowl, an unexplainably haunting looking erasing any sense of life from his features. Oh. Perhaps he is more than impacted by licking his sink?

Something’s off. Uneasily, he questions it. “Why do you want him to lick my sink?”

“You don’t understand. He didn’t even rinse the sink with water yet, okay.” Marshall rasps. “Do you know what it’s like I can  _ smell _ the godawful p-”

“Anyways!” Ash gurgles animatedly, though his plastered on smile, calculatingly unblinking eyes, and unwavering gaze all scream psychopath, and Brandon is currently very much regretting locking himself in here, because that’d slow down his escape.

He should’ve just let Ash murder Marshall, because it’s not like he cares.

Suddenly, a suspiciously Marceline-like screech rakes through his eardrums and imagination with:  _ “if you let my brother die in the hands of  _ that  _ loser, I will disembowel you for my cows.” _

Oh. So he’s dead either way.

“Ash, let go of Marshall Lee,” he hisses.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, I was done with him anyways.” Ash says compliantly, releasing his grip on Marshall’s flannel. He still hasn’t blinked yet. It’s unnerving.

A sudden bang on the door behind him results in Brandon turning around to bang back on the bathroom door because he really doesn’t need someone coming in with a camera phone or interfering.

However, a muffled voice with a familiarly bossy timbre makes it through the door.  _ “It’s me. Marcey. I heard Marshall got into a fight with Ash?”  _

At this, Brandon fumbles out of excitement to unlock the damn door because though Marceline probably has nothing against killing him, at least she’d defend him when the opposition is a dirtrag like Ash.

Opening the door to reveal an entire crowd of curious bystanders that’s keeping a respectable (or fearful) distance away from Marceline, who slides in before locking the door shut behind her. As even Ash falls silent (though his startling discomforting green eyes keeps gaze), Marceline takes in the scene, her gaze indifferent from her typical look of being unimpressed.

“Ash. Did you lay a hand. On my brother. Again?” She states with a sigh. Brandon curls his lips downwards at that. He doesn’t like Marshal, but he definitely hates Ash more. He’s only heard rumors, but the fact that Ash was a true asshole who got unreasonably physical is confirmed now.

“He started it,” Ash shrugs, seemingly unaffected by Marceline’s darkening aura.

“Marsh?”

“He called you a bitch.” Marshall snarls, who seemingly has been revived and recovered after making out with the surface of a sink for a solid minute. “So I knocked him in the mouth. It was deserved.”

“All I said was that you were hot.”

“He was objectifying you.”

“And that you had a temper too much like Marshy’s.” Ash adds nonchalantly. Brandon shudders at how Ash, whose expression remains placid and unremorseful, fluidly and most definitely mockingly said Marshall’s petname that Marceline uses. Ash nods at Marceline, and Brandon easily foreshadows that he’s going to hate whatever he says next, judging by the sudden satisfactory smirk that would appear on a child who sees a weak point and knows they could punch it to get what they want (children are actually awful, okay. Brandon has had traumatizing experiences with them). “You would be more likeable if you were tamer. Quieter. Just stay in the kitchen or some shit-”

Brandon’s currently being suffocated by Marceline’s expanding murderous atmosphere that’s crackling shocks up his spine, but he takes pleasure in its density. At least he knows that she’s getting rightfully angry over Ash’s explicitly sexist remarks. “I mean. That way you could probably end up better than your whore of a brother-”

Brandon isn’t even angry when Marceline shatters the hand mirror snagged off the counter. It was pretty badass anyways, how she basically flung it like a disk and used Ash’s noodle body as target practice. Sure, did he flinch from its suddenness? Perhaps. But definitely not because he thought it was harsh. 

“Huh. Should’ve done that earlier,” Marshall blinks as fragments of glass goes flying near his feet as they fragmented out of the depression in the plastic, as Ash’s knocked out body folds against his ratty shoes. “Thanks Marcey.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank his words. They were what guaranteed a punch.” She spits bitterly, and Brandon takes a step back, as he still senses the tsunami of anger crashing from her lithe body. "God, slut-shaming and being sexist? Can't believe you dated him."

"I must have low standards if I'm stuck with you."

"First of all, you didn't get to choose me, however you got to choose your boyfriend and you chose Ash whose haircut makes him look like Gandalf on crack, so your standards sound like a _you_ issue. Secondly, I'm like the best sister you're ever going to get so shut up you brat." Marshall Lee sticks out his tongue in response, and Brandon fights his primal instinct to roll his eyes. Marceline continues with her vent. “But seriously, Ash. He's such an immature jackass. God why does he always seek trouble with you? This is the third time this past month he’s harassed you-”

“I’m actually pretty fine.”

“Your eye looks like you’re having an allergic reaction.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m allergic to you  _ stop coddling-” _

“I’m not coddling you troll, just let me see. Has he touched anywhere else-”

Brandon watches as Marshall shouts something incorrigible as his sister headlocks him in a bony arm as she begins to pull up his shirt in a search for marks, though Brandon has a feeling that Marceline’s now just doing this to irritate him.

Meanwhile, Brandon glances at the body crumpled across his carpet. Well, he supposes he must dispose of the said carpet- there’s no way he’d be able to get all the glass splinters out of its material. He could always buy another. And Ash himself appears fine, his tacky leather jacket preventing any of the glass from actually cutting him, and Marceline’s assumedly purposeful aim towards his arm rather than his head helped avoid any serious injuries. The worst would probably be just a nasty bruise against his ribs, something he could deal with.

“Bubba-”

“Yes?” He scorns himself. He got whiplash from how fast he responded to that dumb nickname. 

“Do you have a First-Aid somewhere?” Marceline’s smirking, clearly enjoying Marshall, who’s definitely much taller than her in spite of both of them being impressive in height, buckling underneath her unrelenting grip hooked underneath his chin. “Dumbass baby bwother gwot hurt, wight?” she mockingly croons, laying the babyish tone thick. 

“Yeah. I think. I should patch him up.” He cannot believe he just offered himself up like that. Clearly, neither did Marshall, whose knees buckle out of shock, only to choke as his neck slams against Marceline’s forearm. 

“Awe, that’d be swell of you,” Marceline beams, releasing her brother who clearly wasn’t expecting it, since he fucking dies on the floor. “Thanks Bubba, that’s very kind of you.”

His spider-sense goes fucking haywire because as he watches Marceline wink at him, step out of the bathroom where he can still see people gather outside part like the red sea as she makes her exit, he feels like he just walked into a really weirdly elaborate yet half-assed suddenly thrown together trap.

He stares at Marshall, who also looks as though he has no idea what to do.

He sighs. “Okay, I’m grabbing peroxide-” he walks to the white cabinet hooked above his toilet, only to pause, crinkling his nose. He glances, his skin crawling in disgust. “Did one of you happen to get sick in my toilet earlier?” He grumbles, pursing his lips as he quickly flushes down the vomit. 

“Hm. Yeah. Ash was projectile vomiting everywhere.”

“Oh seriously? That’s so gross,” Brandon comments absent-mindedly, as he grabs the bottle of peroxide off the shelf as well as some antibiotic ointment. “Sit on the edge of the bathtub,” he says testily, wondering if Marshall would purposefully disobey that just to annoy him. To his relief, Marshall sits down without hesitation or malice.

“Well.” Marshall clears his throat.

“Well,” Brandon echoes, as he slams down his toilet seat and flushes it, before setting his materials onto it to retrieve some cotton pads. “This. Has been an interesting night.” He summarizes, and seemingly for once, Marshall agrees with him through a sharp nod. 

“Hey, Bubba?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Can I borrow your mouthwash?”

“I-” he takes a moment, stopping his uncapping of the peroxide to give Marshall a judgemental look. “What?”

“I-?” Marshall echoes Brandom tauntingly, and Brandon knots is lips into a scowl, contemplating throwing the peroxide straight against Marshall’s screwed up (and perfectly fine) eye. “Did I fucking stutter?” He laughs.

“You will end up with a permanent one if you don’t shut up.” 

And as expected, Marshall’s grating laugh jackknifes up in both volume and pitch, before he’s silenced forever aby Brandon shoving him into the bathtub. “Keep talking, and I swear to God I’ll turn the shower onto its coldest setting and drown you.”

“Kinky.”

Brandon turns on the shower, smiling inwardly as Marshall sputters, an unexpectedly high scream jerked out his mouth at the glacier temperature. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO FUCKING EXCITED IM GOING TO WRITE ABOUT THE HORSE NEXT CHAPTER I-


	4. bojack horseman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \- off screen horse kidnapping  
> \- on screen horse putting back  
> \- on screen continuation of horse putting back that concludes to horse kidnapping
> 
> \- a LOT of vomiting
> 
> \- chaotic mess.
> 
> \- really really random serious parts that make the abadeer siblings sound daddy issue edgy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ya girl finally updated!!!  
> i love this fic lots bc idk i love adventure time it's just such a fun concept and you can tell that the writers just write whatever they want without giving a shit about how realistic it is yet somehow still conforming to flexible laws that They Are God Over.
> 
> i just. 
> 
> didn't update for a while bc i thought this fic had no traction tbh like i was kinda like "mm idk do ppl actually read this" but then like. i rewatched a couple AT episodes and i was like "NEVERMIND WHO CARES IM WRITING"
> 
> warning: i barely reviewed this so skskskks SORRY IF LIKE SOME OF THE SENTENCES ARE SUPER RUNON/DON'T REALLY EVEN MAKE SENSE LIKE ACTUALLY

“You knocked out a guy in my upstairs bathroom?”

Marceline takes a long sip of her water, before staring Bonnie Bubblegum directly in the eyes. “It was deserved.” Distinctively, after those words, she feels like a quenched plant.

A quenched plant trapped underneath a bowl in darkness, clinging onto its last bit of fuel for photosynthesis before all of its nonexistent organs shut down in boycott for personal rights that she damn well does not deserve because she has proven she cannot fucking behave. Because  _ wow. _ It’s almost like all common sense abandoned her and left her dry in this burning desert of shame, the climate change creating such an environment definitely caused by her attempt to be funny and badass, but coming off as a white boy named Kyle.

She takes another sip of water, and decides that at the very least, she can imagine the small gulp of water being enough to drown her internally screaming soul of humiliation with the acts of self-denial and purposeful ignorance of the consequences of her words.

“Yeah. Deserved it,” Marceline echoes her own statement once more, her voice distant in her untraceable thoughts that really have no rationality behind any of them.

Somehow, despite having the astral projected mind of a person high on burnt gorilla glue, Marceline is still able to feel vaguely grateful that despite everything, God has yet to completely give up on her since she still has enough of a filter between her thoughts and her mouth. The slim proof of this would be how she has yet to word-vomit any of her indescribably dumb thoughts that she would’ve otherwise inevitably shoved down Bubblegum’s throat with a toilet brush, treating them like the shit they are.

Though, even though she’s resorted to justifying her refusal to acknowledge her words by considering how much worse they easily could’ve been, that does not mean what she had ended up saying was remotely good. This is evident considering how there’s a sense of complex confusion conveyed through Bubblegum’s crinkled expression. Really, in the dim house lighting and already abnormal atmosphere (after all, Marceline is literally  _ talking  _ to Bubblegum- something that simply doesn’t  _ happen _ ), Marceline’s able to conjure a cursed thought that Bubblegum kinda looks like someone just pierced her big toe with a barbell. Well, if Bubblegum looks that much in pain over a simple statement, Marceline figures she should elaborate. 

“It was Ash. Pretty sure he’s still dead on your carpet, by the way.”

“Oh.” Bubblegum’s features contort into one of disdain, one that Marceline is used to but curiously enough, in this case, it’s not directed at her. “Ew. Him. Your brother’s ex, right?”

Gagging, Marceline rolls her eyes hard enough to even tighten the loose bags underneath them. “Look. Marshy is definitely a dumbass at times, and he does have bad taste I mean just look at his fashion sense-”

“You two share the same fashion sense.”

“Yes, but I came up with it first he has to find his own.” She responds indifferently, only to instantly regret it due to Bubblegum’s unimpressed look, indicating she either didn’t sense the obvious sibling sarcasm she just tapped in, or, she knew it was sarcasm but found it bitchy. 

Then again, why should Marceline compensate for her type of humour? Even if she might wants to appeal to the girl, and wants her to like her and everything even just platonically. 

_ Really. All this emotional junk, it really be my fault even though I  _ know  _ better. _ After all, if even Marshy, someone who actually dated Ash after  _ knowing  _ straight up that he was the guy who took a shit on the second-floor girl’s bathroom floor in his freshman year, is teasing  _ her _ over her crush, then she  _ must _ have a wack sense of self-worth and taste. 

_ Whatever _ . She continues smacktalking Ash though, knowing that dislike towards him is common ground between them (and probably more than seventy-eight percent of the student body to be honest, but still). “Like, seriously though, Ash has janked anger issues and a screwed up mentality, I swear to Jesus and his thirteen disciples that he literally cannot take a hint. It’s been a year! Like, I’m just joking when I say this, but seriously, what the junk does Ash even see in Marshy to continue trying to even just ‘be friends’ with him?”

“How do you know how many disciples he had?” Fair enough to focus on that, she supposes.

Now, Marceline definitely isn’t going to go into depth about how back when Simone could actually string a coherent thought together, she had decided that the first thing to do after her husband left was to have her children baptized in hopes that it would guarantee them a passage to heaven. After all, even if it’s due to reasons she can’t control, Simone technically still dipped out of her responsibilities of being a parent, and therefore probably didn’t expect her children to last longer than her. So really, if anything, she did the best she could do for them in the long run (though their lives were expected to be anything but long).  However, seven-year-old Marceline was so against that idea, and felt like a rebellious badass after ripping out her wiggly tooth the day before, that she decided to learn every important figure in the Bible whose names had less than three syllables to curse the moment the priest was about to dunk her in the water.

At the age of seven, Marceline learned that an entire generalized community can legally file restraining orders. 

She also learned that when Marshall left black and blue teeth-indent bruises on the priest’s wrist. It scarred. Physically and mentally. Marceline would feel more bad for the priest if he hadn’t looked five seconds away from dunking her into the tub of holy water and keeping her there for the rest of their baptism.

 

Two weeks after that fateful Sunday, the priest entered their house with pepper spray and anointing oil to exorcise them, since they’re lawfully not allowed to step on church property anymore. He also claimed that there was something evil within the house- that singular opinion is why to this date there are over twenty-three crosses donated by the church, randomly nailed on their walls. No one is motivated enough in their family to take them down, and if anything, they make good necklace holders.

So yeah.

Not a story she’d ever expose if she ever wants to show her face in front of her crush ever again.

 

“Oh.” Marceline shrugs. “Common knowledge, no?”

“Um. Yeah, ‘no’, not really,” Bubblegum’s eyebrow arches, and Marceline has to avert her gaze by the obvious judgement contouring her freckled visage. At this moment, out of internalized embarrassment and perhaps a little bit of spite too, for herself or for Bubblegum for her feelings even sprouting in their toxic relationship, Marceline recalls Marshy griping about her irrational crush on Bubblegum.

His (multiple) complaints are fair though. She doesn’t even know  _ why  _ she likes the girl either- they might’ve seen each other a lot as children since back then, Marshy and Bubba actually  _ did _ like each other and were good friends who liked to terrorize the neighborhood with Bonnie’s plastic Barbie Jeep by running over rich peoples’ mailboxes. But after they fell apart, she and Bubblegum naturally developed a drift as well, due to social class differences and simply because their attitudes and interests never intersect, or remotely appeal to the other. Not like that’d necessarily stop positive or polite interactions, but the thing is that they’re too different, to the point where their characters  _ disagree _ , rather than simply coexist.

Marceline always had a sinking feeling that Bubblegum finds her personality distasteful and immature, not like there’s anything she can do to change that.

Yet, here they are, holding a civil conversation for the first time since middle school years, as the graduating class of high school. “God, I once had to smoke Ash out of the bathroom because he was harassing your brother.” She grimaces, setting down her glass of some suspicious amber drink. The longer Marceline stares at it, the more she wants to taste it- it looks sweet. She might’ve neve had a sweet-tooth like her younger brother, but that doesn’t mean pretty things don’t appeal to her, never mind how palpable they might be. She glances at Bubblegum.  _ Exhibit B, after all. _

Bubblegum doesn’t look remotely drunk, and yet, the glass she set down is nearly empty. Perks of growing up in a brewery. She glances at Bubblegum’s slender arms, and flat stomach. She might be toned also due to exercise, but still (Marceline doesn’t know if she’s more jealous that Bubblegum clearly lacks a fear towards food since she doesn’t seem to have an omniscient conscience about whether or not a single drink of alcohol will suddenly pouch her stomach, or, that the Bubblegums in general appear to have a fast metabolism).

Bubblegum’s staring at her oddly, probably because she’s been silent for too long and eye-fucking her drink. Yep- definitely sober.

“Wait-” Marceline fully digests her statement. “Was that the time Ash got suspended?”

At this, Bubblegum’s lips twitches into something other than the typical curve of disapproval that Marceline normalized herself on the receiving end of, to the first genuine smile she’s witnessed towards her in years.

To be fair, the organic manner of the smile itself is spawned out of cruelty for an equally awful dude, and shadows her soft countenance with something mischievous, one that would be seen on a first grader who’s five seconds away from pulling the fire alarm on a dare.

“Well, while I don’t condone dramatic actions, I do believe in weighted consequences.” Bubblegum shrugs nonchalantly. “Unfortunately I believe the punishment doesn’t balance out what he’s done to Marshy-” And the way she christens Marshall so informally is something that stirs emotions of fondness curdled by envy within Marceline’s hollow gut, “but, Marshy insisted not to cause too much trouble for Ash.”

At this, Marceline scowls. “Of course he said that. For the drama whore he is-” she records how Bubblegum’s obvious ease dissipates at her vulgarity even though this is simply how she and Marshall addresses each other. Not like Marceline cares. “He’s pretty lowkey when it comes to his relationships.” 

“Yeah. He’s a sweetie.”

Marceline stares. Not even due to her dramatic nature, since she’s pretty sure the average human being would be slightly concerned hearing those words out of a presumably sane person. “We’re talking about Marshall, right now, right?” She has to specify.

“Okay well,” Bubblegum sputters with a scoff that highlights her tone with friendly connotations. “I mean-” And Marceline feels lighter.

Lighter than she usually is at her smallest weight, lighter than her brain feels, fuzzy with cotton cushioning the insides of her skull and lavender buds blooming out her ears. 

Bubblegum is laughing. Not at her- but with her. Not like Bubblegum ever laughed at her- it’s a small mercy from whatever deadbeat god is puppeteering Mother Nature to have her shape Bubblegum into the nice person she is.

But she certainly would never consider her a friend- they simply snip at each other too much. If anything, Marceline is simply too mean, even though she knows it’s simple misunderstanding that creates that image of her. Really, she loves Bubblegum, but the girl has to get off her high horse of judging Marceline’s mocking interactions with her friends as whatever she wants to interpret it as, even though she’s an outsider to their relationship.

It’s unfair.

“God, Ash is such an ass, though,” Marceline clicks, relieving Bubblegum from the burden of having to continue stumbling over her perception on Marsh. 

Though Bubblegum’s scornful look has returned at the cuss, she still nods in agreement. 

“Also I broke your mirror.” And Marceline inwardly dies inside, and finishes the rest of her water like it’s a shot, despite looking on with muted amusement as Bubblegum practically chokes on her drink from the suddenness of Marceline’s confession.

“I’m sorry  _ what _ .”

* * *

 

“You sure you don’t want a change of clothes?”

Marshall shakes his head, which results in splatters of cold water speckling his surroundings, including Bubba himself, who crinkles his nose. “God, you dog.” And Marshall crinkles his nose at that, because it was most definitely in all explicit forms of evidence and reality, Bubba was the one who decided to spray him with a dose of freezing-ass water.

However, maybe it’s because of the pain, shock, or the fact that his butt’s been numb for the past five minutes after sitting in its own puddle of cold jeans, he focuses rather on a humourous aspect of Bubba’s statement. “Haha. The spelling for both words are inversed,” he murmurs slurringly, slightly regretting shaking his head earlier, even though now Bubba has that funny expression of looking like a regretful dog owner, since the movement intensified the startlingly sharp throb in the back of his eye. Even though he endured five minutes of awkwardly sitting there in a weird state of anxiousness as he started writing a thesis on when’s the appropriate time to thank Bubba (after or during his doctoring?) while the boy smeared something bitter and minty over his black eye (he may have accidentally gotten some near his mouth and unthinkingly licked it and died for a second at the taste), and attempt to crudely patch up the slight cut inflicted on his tender eyebag (or maybe on the shiner- they both look purple) with a Spongebob Band-Aid.

He doesn’t question why the bandage itself is pink even though it adorns a Squidward design.

“Yeah, there’s a word for that, you know. Called palindrome.” Bubba murmurs, and inwardly, Marshall screams, because he was just  _ joking _ but of course he has to be so scientific-whatever in response. “Anyways, you should really avoid Ash. Like. He seems…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, knotting his lips until it’s practically visibly nonexistent.

“Unstable.” Marshall defines, deadpanned and completing his sentence, because he’s not a coward. 

At this, Bubba nods slowly, his lips still pressed into a line white from pressure, his eyes widening to emphasize his agreement, as they slowly meet his gaze from the corner of their sockets. And Marshall forgotten about this. About how comically expressive Bubba is, consciously relying on his features to say more than his polished words. “Like, jeez, Marceline literally had to subdue him with a mirror.”

“Oh,” Marshall waves his hand flippantly. “Nah, that was just Marceline being Marceline, she did that because she wanted to.”

Bubba scrunches his lips. “Yeah,” he nods approvingly with a tilt of his head. “Fair enough,” he murmurs with an exaggerated brow raise. “What’s up between you and Ash, anyways? I thought you two were dating? Like I think you broke up a while back, but like.” And he shrugs. Well, Marshall isn’t a dumb hoe, so he knows that Bubba definitely knows the rioting gossip surrounding he and Ash’s relationship that resulted in one day putting a Very Big Rock through Dr. “Cinnamon” Bun’s third-floor classroom window.

After all, if Marshall recalls correctly, Bubba was actually seated in the first row of that class duringthe fateful Period 2, and got to witness the failed homicide first-hand and up-close.

Marshall barks a clipped laugh. “I mean,” he grunts. “He sometimes still thinks we’re dating. It’s been like, a  _ year _ since I accidentally shoved him out of my second-floor window and said we’re through.” 

Bubba pauses from where he’s retrieving a towel from the closet in the wall. “Yeah, hey, What the Heck?”

Grabbing the towel without asking from Bubba’s arms (which in turn, rewards him with a mildly insulted expression- lay off it, Princess), he begins to roughly dry his hair while attempting to speak through his muffling actions. “Um, yeah. Really, it actually  _ was _ an accident,” he grunts, flinching as the towel scuffs his bruised eye. 

“Was he being violent?” And there’s something rigid in Bubba’s tone- disapproving. Fair enough, Bubba might find him disgusting like he took a shit in his shoe (but at least he didn’t pee in his sink), but he isn’t actually morally constipated in any form. Still, even with that reminder, something that resembles hunger cramps clenches his lungs at that tone, and Marshall finds himself keeping the towel draped over his vision for really no reason to avoid actually seeing whatever expression Bubba must be wearing.

“Nah. He just tripped over my cat and fell out of my open window. Wasn’t violent. Just angry.”

And finally, he unveils himself, leaving the towel on his damp shoulders, allowing it to offer him some warmth as his drying clothes is slowly evaporating the warmth from his typically frigid body anyways. Maybe it’s due to calorie and energy deficiency, but he has a difficult time in general generating heat. 

Then he actually captures a glimpse of Bubba’s expression, and his teeth clack so hard to smother a choked laugh of shock, that it grinds deep into his tongue and fucking obliterates his pain receptors on the spot. Doubling over from suddenly terminating his tongue, his shoulders continue to jerk harshly from raspy laughs escaping between his gated teeth. 

“Are you okay?” And there’s tone of amusement undermining the general implication of worry from the words themselves.

“I mean, no, not usually,” he finally wheezes. “I just fucking killed my tongue,” he explains, and at that, the furrows wrinkling the boy’s unblemished visage erases. 

_ “Wow, _ ” and Marshall, familiarised to hearing sarcasm off the boy’s tongue in response to him breathing in the same room, can easily identify something different lacing his words- something that alleviates the concern of being mocked, or leered at.

It’s almost joking. Like. Not in the snippy, snark way with obvious malice spurring their conversation, but a non-stressful way. 

It’s like. Comparing binge-eating to eating healthily. Damn.

Noticing that small detail is probably the reason why Marshall doesn’t automatically say that the reason why he just experienced the seventh circle of hell for .5 seconds was because Bubba looked severely constipated in response to Marshall’s involuntary pseudo-manslaughter. Saying it might ruin the mood.

“But really, Marshall, you should be more careful-”

And  _ eugh _ . He hates any sense of parental authority, or just in general, being told what to do or feel, especially when he already  _ knows.  _ “If Ash cornered you in the bathroom, then that’s actually a red flag-”

“Okay, he didn’t really  _ corner _ me, he just had to pee, and I needed the toilet first,” Marshall grumbles. 

“Did you not lock the door?” And there’s a ‘you-dumb?’ quality in his voice. 

“Okay-” And he realizes with faint mortification that his tone is similar to a whine, “are you- are you like. Are you implying you think I wouldn’t?” He scowls, his tone pitching near the end of his question out of faint indignation and astonishment. 

And at this, Bubba just shrugs. 

Cool. That’s amazing faith in humanity right there.

Why doesn’t God just exterminate him like not-door-closing-while-urinating pest he is?

“Okay, so, just, just to clear the air-” Marshall begins, his tone coloured in obvious disbelief, some undertone of amusement outlined solely by a pencil of shock. “I  _ do  _ close my door while I pee. I just felt the need to like, ya know,  _ clarify- _ ”

“Good to know.”

If this wasn’t Bubba, he would’ve flipped him off.

Then he remembers this is Bubba, and flips him off. 

At this, the boy sticks his tongue out in response.

“But I guess your lock sucks-”

“It is  _ not _ my lock’s fault-”

“And somehow, Ash got in,” he finishes with a shrug, completely disregarding every interjection Bubba made with a snarky attitude. “So yeah. You should probably fix your lock so you don’t face another incident of an asshole not waiting his turn to take a piss while you’re on the toilet,” he advises, his expression flat.

Bubba simply fixates a similar unimpressed look to mirror his. “Maybe you should just be better at locking doors.”

“If I couldn’t lock a bathroom door, a door that’s used daily and by a variety of people, then I think that’s your issue.” He grumbles, and at this, Bubba scoffs, and before Marshall can comprehend the directory of his hand- scuffs him in the bangs, his warm hand unintentionally carding a few strands.

_ Whoa, what’s happening.  _ Slightly freaked, he stares at Bubba, who also appears startled by his own actions. Which is rude. Because hey,  _ he’s _ the one with the hand of his ex-best friend-turned-social-enemy currently in his hair.

He suddenly and unexpectedly feels somewhat self-conscious of what conditioner he used this morning, and if it’s evidential through the current texture of his hair.

However, Bubba, being the direct person he is (a nicer way of saying: emotionally constipated  _ only  _ when it comes to Marshall Lee), fully addresses the oddity of what occurred. “So. I don’t know why I did that.”

“Yeah, me too.” Marshall answers, just following Bubba’s lead, unsure if what he might say next that would affect this strange atmosphere of nonchalance. “Not that I mind.” He takes a second. He was hoping to reassure Bubba that he’s not going to be a bitch like they usually are with each other- but that comment just by objective context, is already  _ weird _ . “Like. Not that I mind in like-” And though Marshall knows that he plastered a smile over his passive face, he can vividly visualize from third-person-perspective his little Sims character standing at the edge of a cliff and screaming into the deep abyss called his soul.

“Yeah, yeah, no I get it. Just. Stop talking.”

“Fair.”  _ Thank you _ goes unsaid. 

The strange, but not necessarily normal quiet continues right after that.

Normally, their definition of silence is tense, awful, and both parties rile each other up. He expected Bubba to make some snide comment in any other situation if he touched his hair, probably using the words ‘crusty’ or ‘greasy’ a couple times; however, whatever mood happened from the start, initiated by Bubba’s uncomfortable silence lacking any usual strain or disdain, prevents either of them from wanting to return to their general sneers and scathing bites.

It’s tiring, always being on edge.

Right now, it’s just two dudes, who are past themselves to pretend like they haven’t tried to kill each other at least more than half an hour ago, and acting like they don’t have more history and emotional baggage than they really do.

And one of them is stroking the other’s hair. 

Well- Marshall decides to be more fair. It was really just one weird swipe. Makes him feel like a hairless dog.

“Okay, but just wondering, why?” Marshall clears his throat.

“I usually pet my friends. They’re short.”

“I’m taller than you?”

“You’re  _ sitting _ , and I don’t think it matters since you forgot how to lock the bathroom door so you don’t get rights.”

“I told you, it was your door’s fault!” And the flow of flippant teasing has returned, and Marshall feels the rumples denting his withering lungs soothe. “Anyways,” he says with an indifferent tone- after all, he is somewhat regretful interrupting whatever whimsical realm was concocting with the lingering smell of vomit in their upper bathroom housing an unconscious body. There’s something distinctly surreal, being trapped above of raging party that parallels Bingo Night in a senior center, but he knows it’s ending. 

There’s only so much the abnormalities of an environment can offer, and being two things too habitual to dislike, they can’t continue on their own.

Better to end it on a good note rather than string it out.

“Well, thanks for patching me up, but I should find Marcey to make sure she hasn’t left solely to steal one of your kitchen knives-” He chirps, yanking the towel off his limp, still wet flannel and handing it in a crumpled mess to Bubba, who folds it to hook it on the porcelain edge of the bathtub.

“Yeah. No problem,” Bubba says, something undecipherable in his timbre that’s uncharacteristic enough to make Marshall hesitate to be the first to leave. “Wanna head down? Pretty sure there’s more pizza.”

Marshall Lee can feel God’s laughter resonate in the drowning depths of his stomachs, ricocheting through his ribs like they’re the keys of a cheap xylophone made in China before escaping out his body in the odor of death and bile.

He smiles. “Yeah. Coolio.”  _ No, NO not coolio. _

At this, Bubba smiles. “You say ‘coolio’ one more time, and I’m going to sue your existence so hard you throw up.”

And  _ wow _ , so considerate; he doesn’t even  _ have _ to sue him for Marshall to guarantee that he will most definitely be upchucking everything from this godforsaken night later, but really, a sweet gesture.

“That’s really prejudice against my vocabulary,” Marshall mutters, allowing Bubba to exit the bathroom first, and he takes a second because he needs to prepare himself for the horde of leers, cameras, and probably the entire student body watching him with grotesque fascination and start whipping their own version on how come his left eye looks like the decayed guacamole with purple food dye that parents would do claiming it’s ‘festive’ for Ricky’s sixth-grade birthday party.

Yet, as he forces himself to drag his feet after Bubba (after stomping on Ash’s limp fingers once) he realizes that the corridor has drained to a few stragglers who aren’t even focused on him, rather on whatever’s on their screen or on their partner’s lips, and that he’s in the clear. Pausing at the top of the stairs, his motor skills die out at the obvious sound from below, inferring life and people.

“Why’d you stop?” Bubba calls from the third step down, finally noticing Marshall who’s standing at the top of the stairs, towering in the shadows like in classic horror movies where serial killers stand behind the hot main character waiting for them to look over for dramatic effect as a lightning bolt scatters the clouds through a window conveniently placed behind them.

“Uh.” And Marshall feels like his throat is expanding, scarred and lacerated by his trimmed yet jagged nails when he shoves them against it, a sensation clogging his airway, similar to that one time Marce got annoyed at him and sprayed Febreze into his mouth in a modernized way of “washing his mouth with soap”. “I don’t think it’d look good if I went downstairs with this massive shiner,” he confesses, and though Bubba’s face is obscured by the shadow casted by the slanted roof, his eyes are luminescent, and rounds out from sympathy.

_ Oh no, I’m in danger _ , Marshall thinks distantly, noticing the characteristic gaze of empathy gentling the glow within Bubba’s eyes. Such an image only exists in childhood reminiscences and in the gaze towards everyone but the social circle of Marshall Lee being the population of 1. Bubba has always been so willing to give, despite what his typical attitude towards Marshall suggests. Bubba gives the stars formed from his malleable tears of sympathy, and he consensually cries and forces himself to comprehend, so that he can curl another’s crooked and chipped fingers around the stars of affection that first forms in the puddle of his blue, blue eyes, before spilling over his waterline. 

Marshall Lee does not know if the stars are genuine, if the emotions swirling within their watery bodies ever will be, and not simply something artificial Bubba produces to form comfort, but he’s greedy. Marshall Lee would take all the stars fluttering towards earth before they fertilize the soil, and let them stain the palms of his hands with streaks neon glows and murdered easy love, licking the residue off the heel of his callous hands for the first time, willing to eat without conscious. 

He’ll trail after Bubba to pick up the broken stars meant for others, to hoard in his pockets like an afternoon snack, knowing that Bubba would never willingly empathize for him.

Stars have fallen for lesser men.

And Marshall glances into the cesspools of cerulean tainted by the problems of others rooted in the depths of round eyes, and realizes, that just maybe, he’ll finally get a star personalized for his own.

Something burns in his chest area, smoking out his chest of breath, leaving him light-headed.

Great. Must be acid reflux being a bitch. It is an inconveniently permanent consequence of eating disorders. 

“Look, no offense,”  Bubba starts, and Marshall Lee does not like those words, “but you do have a pretty bad reputation in school. Then again, now I’m not saying it’s a consequence of your own actions or personality-” now, the former Marshall can accept. 

He did set fire to Lenny’s carpet once.

The latter, he cannot. He might have a mean streak, and can be overboard with his haughtiness at times, but it’s not like he’s unfair in some of his unflattering aspects of personality. At least, unfair to the extent where he’s a literal dick like Ash.

An example would be that he technically did not  _ mean _ to set Lenny’s carpet on fire.

“But that sucks. But I don’t think you’ll have a lot of fun if you stay up there.” He adds.

“Rather not have fun than actually have a miserable time.” He snarls, and now, Bubba appears slightly exasperated- and there’s the usual frustration that Marshall began to claim as Bubba’s special treatment for him.

This is a familiar dance that consists more of stepping on each others’ toes. It’s familiar, cold, and most importantly, easy.

Marshall Lee is not a nice guy, and he’s certainly not a good one either. He feeds off of easy affection, and anything that requires more effort, that requires more of  _ him _ , he frosts them out with teasing and a constant radius of promised disgust around him, like warning tape of a crime scene, of a disaster, alerting the other to never take a step within his walls, and if they do, he already warned them with neon flags and an entire smoke signal curling off his body in plumes of burnt flesh and ashy love.

Bubba sees the signs, and has always acknowledged them.

But this time, he doesn’t.

“It’ll be dark downstairs where they’re hosting the movie. Remember?  _ Iron Man _ ? I’m sure they’re starting up the first one because no one knows how to watch things in order.” 

_ Well. I had the tapes up, never letting the smoke signal die out _ . It’s not his fault if Bubba pushes past all the warnings. 

But, Marshall Lee is tired, and if Bubba is willing to extend his hand, to bat away the cobwebs woven within his ribcage and swabbing around his slow heart, then who’s he to turn it away?

Marshall Lee feeds off of easy love, after all.

* * *

 

“What do you mean, you stole a horse?”

“What  _ else _ does it mean other than I stole a horse?”

Now, Marshall can’t possibly say that he felt uncomfortably self-conscious about his bruised eye and decided to ditch the lame-ass party through the basement window and ran to a nearby barn where he had a duel with the farmer and her twelve-year-old daughter who gnawed on his ankle like a rodent so he escaped by stealing their mare?

“Wh-”

Marshall blinks expectantly at Bubba, who even in the shrouding darkness of nighttime, has enough depth in his sharply featured visage for Marshall to note the shuttering of his eyelids within their deep sockets.

Behind him, the mare who he affectionately nicknamed ‘Jackass’ after she ripped off all the buttons of his flannel in a homicidal attempt to vore him, begins to nuzzle his face. Marshall, who isn’t a dumb bitch, knows full well she’s doing that thing again where attempts to lick the herbal medication off his eye with no consideration of his feelings or her digestive system, and lightly bats away her snout, ignoring her scathing snort of hot air against his cheek in indignation.

For a horse, she has a lot of human attitude.

“Marshall  _ Lee _ . You disappeared for an hour, and I thought you just ditched-”

He wisely decides not to mention that he technically did.

“And you come back with a  _ horse? _ ”

“To be fair- it’s not like you really wanted me at your party in the first place,” and underneath the pale moon decorated with translucent clouds of glitter and pulled cotton, reflects enough light for Marshall to see the obvious frustration indenting the boy’s face.

Except, the quality cushioning Bubba’s next words are what really characterize the emotion as something pathetically desperate, rather than annoyed as Marshall assumed that it was. “Marshall, I mean. I know we don’t get along, and we usually pretend like we do for Fionna and Finn’s sakes-”

“We don’t even pretend,” he remarks coldly, allowing apathy to ice over his lake of emotions that he’s drowning in, because whatever’s underneath that thick layer of ice can never be seen. If that ice cracks, everything forming a whirlpool underneath will flood their unstable, burning bridge christened their relationship, and maybe in the end they do need some sense of feeling to properly extinguish the scalding remarks setting this bridge in a blaze of fire- but too much, and they’ll both end up under. And Marshall knows better than to tempt that option.

“Look, I  _ try _ Marshall,” and maybe tonight he has. Maybe Bubba really did extend a hand but he can’t just  _ do _ that after years of rejecting the core of Marshall’s personality- if they can’t even agree on the basis of mannerisms and humour, then it’s obvious that they can’t be anything compatible nor polite. 

Or maybe Marshall’s just a coward. 

“You tried tonight, but what about tomorrow?” And he’s accusing, and he’s being unfair, and Marshall should’ve never came because now, something painful is radiating in the back of his bruised eye, wearing down his patience and his tolerance for everything else when combined with the stress of  _ Brandon Bubblegum _ . 

And wasn’t he, Marshall Lee, the one who complained that Bubba never tried?  _ Well, he’s trying now, isn’t he?  _ “Okay, wait,” he starts, because something’s contorting Bubba’s expression into one of justified anger, Marshall’s words having taken root. “I’m being unfair,” he exhales. “Forget I said that, can we just. Not?” And the sudden need to explain himself, to at least prevent  _ another _ misunderstanding, to salvage whatever image of himself is left taped as recognizable in Bubba’s perspective, happens.

A crack forms, deep and angry in the ice that was locking Marshall safely in his frozen lake. “Like. I don’t think I can handle us being friends for one night and all of a sudden have us revert back to our regular relationship the day after,” and because Bubba’s staring at him, staring at him with those eyes swirling with pity that spits in his face and forces Bubba’s inherent kindness down his throat when he doesn’t  _ want it- _

He finds himself tacking on a crude sentence to ty and lighten the mood. “You know. Like a one-night stand.” He jokes.

Bubba’s face screws up.

_ Hm. Okay. May not have been the best choice. _

“Okay, anyways!” Marshall clasps his hands together, pretending like a whole damn horse isn’t attempting to exfoliate the inside of his ear with its tongue.  _ God, gross. _

“Wait, Marshall, we should  _ really _ talk-”

And something must show on Marshall’s face, because Bubba recoils instantly, and Marshall can’t handle Bubba. He already has enough problems on his own. And though it sucks, the sense of loneliness that haunts their house with ghosts of the past, one of them even being seven-year-old Bubba who always slouches by his bed and peers through his cereal boxes (literally), at least it’s familiar. Familiar enough for him to ignore, and focus on more important things.

“If you excuse me,” Marshall says calmly, the words contrasting the downwards shape of his lips and the hollowness in his eyes that feel foggy, feel too distant and staring past Bubba’s undescribable countenance. “I need to place a horse back.”

* * *

 

He did not get to place the horse back.

Instead, Marshall finds himself, somehow, ass soiled by dirt and muck, crumpled on dewy grass,  with Jackass living up to her name. “Marshall, just! Just call her! She likes you better than me!”

Marshall groans, before splaying out in exhaustion from the past five minutes of trying to force Jackass back into her barn.

Feeling his stomach deliciously cave in, almost sinking by the drop of elevation from his ribcage to his waste, he’s able to feel okay for the first time that night.

_ Knew throwing up the pizza in payment of having to see see my ex’s dick in unnecessary HD was a good idea. _

“Marshall!” But Bubba’s call is distant, so insignificant in the vastness of the world, and for a second, Marshall’s lost, his gaze fixated on the pale, forgiving moon waxy from white crayons , neighbours with reflective stars cut out from glossy magazine pages hung by yarn from the ceiling of Earth. The shadowed clouds on the inner side of the plastic globe that traps the atmosphere, are plastered with a glue stick. Not tape. Tape would ruin the mood. “Marshall!” And he finally sits up, his stomach flat enough to not spill over his tightened jeans. “We are cleaning  _ your _ mess, please at least try!”

“I  _ am _ trying, the horse just hates the farmer more than she hates us!”

“She spat on you earlier, I think there’s no way she can hate anything more than you!”

“You literally said she disliked you more than me.” He grumbles. 

Scowling, he finally teeters onto his belting knees, staring at Jackass whose expresion somehow conveys fifth degree murder and undigested pasta.  _ Try me, bitch _ . 

Sighing, he yanks at the belt they’ve loosely fixed around her neck as a permanently loose collar (he’s seventy-eight percent sure that horses don’t have collars, but then again, neither should humans, but that doesn’t stop chokers from existing), while rapidly clicking his tongue. “C’mon, girl. Look, it’s home!” He gestures down the pasture, where the barn sits, skeletal and ominous in the dark. “Home sweet home!”

“Marshall, don’t you have food or something to tempt her?”

“Do I look like a PEZ dispenser?”

“You’re weird enough to be one.” 

“Shut up, you’re the one touching a horse’s ass.”

At that, Bubba does peer around the horse from where he’s positioned, in their agreed method to have him try and nudge her along, though, his nudging has rather quickly evolved into full out pushing and leaning his entire weight on her. “I’m only here because you refuse to. Coward.”

Marshall’s ready to smack Jackass in the neck to get her to react in a way that would hopefully result in kicking her hindlegs, hoofing Bubba right in the head, but decides against it. Because really, Jackass is just here for the ride, and who’s he to take a piss at that since he was the one who initiated this entire rollercoaster?

“You don’t even have to be here!” Marshall retorts, before stroking Jackass, pretending like she isn’t trying to fit his fingers between her teeth.

“Oh, right, like I can leave you alone to put back the horse after you  _ stole _ it.” And before Marshall can retaliate, Bubba does first. Which is honestly for the better, because he didn’t really have a good response anyways. “Just. Grab hay or something, go into the barn and see if there’s any food!”

And Marshall scoffs, ready to inform how there was a German Shepherd in the barn who bites, a knowledge acquired by experience, and that it barks as well, before a sudden thought stuns him into silence.

“Do you think. Do you think that maybe. Like, maybe I could tempt her by letting her lick my eye?” He theorizes slowly, humiliation and internal death trying to retract onto those words in refusal to let the outside world know of their existence.

Silence greets his idea. And Marshall figures that the only reason why he even voiced out that cursed thought is because it’s  _ Bubba _ , Bubba, who pents himself all day with his science experiments and probably updates a blog about bacterial infections passed through animal saliva, should know all about hygienics and proper sanitary conditions. It’s a safe conclusion that he would be grossed out and start considering Marshall vile (more so than usual).

Then: “I mean. Go for it dude.”

_ And Marshall forgotten that some sense of Bubba wouldn’t be boring because after all, he hangs out with Fiona and Finn. _

The instant betrayal that jolts through his heart in watts doesn’t compare to the dizzying vertigo of falling off the cliff of understanding that  _ damn _ , he really set himself up for this.

“Wait, you were supposed to say  _ no _ -”

“This is  _ your _ stolen horse, you better do everything you can to put her back.”

Marshall feels the juices of his submerged bones turn freezing cold, because yeah, hey,  _ I trusted you. _

And look where that got him. 

With an obligation to let a horse tongue his eye.

“I am  _ not _ doing that, won’t it get worse- aren’t you like a medical student won’t like the skin around my eye turn black and fall off-”

“Don’t worry!” Bubba hisses, clearly panicking by how they’ve been here for over ten minutes and he has a party to get to as the responsibility as the host, and that just less than eight bathtubs away, is a lit creaky house belonging to a cranky old farmer with a pitchfork and a young yee-hawing child with a teething problem. “Really, that look would fit your aesthetic anyways.”

“I am not ruining my eyesight more for this! I also did not pay for two contact lenses only to figure out I can only use one after this night!”

“Bro, you’re  _ blind? _ I have  _ never _ seen you with glasses, even as a kid. _ ” _

“Please do not use ‘bro’ ever again- you are not a Kyle.”

“What does that even  _ mean _ -”

“The porch light turned on.” Marshall whispers, interrupting Bubba because  _ this is definitely more urgent. _ The sudden soft glow radiating from the center of the property captures his attention. It’s almost ethereal.

Then he sees a crooked shadow peering out the window, before quickly running in the direction of the door. 

“Oh my God.  _ Marshall _ , MARSHALL what do we  _ do _ -”

“Fuckin’ KIDS you’re back here touchin’ my baby get the FUCK off my property-” the shriek of a chainsmoker carries through the peaceful Van Gogh landscape.

Mildly, Marshall realizes that despite the luminescent tranquility that highlights the place in oil paint streaks of plum to clementines, easily parallels those Stephen King worlds where bodies fertilize the rich soil and the cabin in the middle of nowhere is the only witness that would never testify to what occurred.

In summary, they’re going to fucking die.

“Horse. Now.” A sudden voice reaches him, and before Marshall can comprehend past the figure running towards them while brandishing a suspiciously long item that  _ hey _ , resembles almost a shotgun of some sort- a harsh jerk to his shirt pulling in the direction above startles him out of his strange deer-in-headlights resignation to death.

Perhaps it’s God willing to whisk him away because death is inevitable but 420 willing to smoke it out with him.

Then he looks up to find the source of the tug, and realizes it’s Bubba, somehow seated on Jackass, looking five seconds away from putting the sole of his customized pink Adidas through his teeth. Not God, then.

Distantly through a haze from the fog machine of surrealness, he notes with some sense of disgruntledness that those shoes are brighter than his future.

“Marshall, stop  _ staring _ get UP.” And hey, Marshall knows there’s a movie called  _ UP  _ that he wants to watch one day.

_ And do I let  _ Bubba _ , who a couple hours after the sun rises will trade bitter insults in the hallways with me, see me fall flat on my bony ass, or do I get murdered by a farmer with three individual teeth in his whole mouth? _

He glances nonchalantly behind him. The farmer, slowed by the awkwardly bulky gun of whatever breed, is now attempting to hop the fence into the pasture. 

Well. Death it is.

“Marshall I swear to God if you don’t  _ get on the damn horse _ , your sister is going to summon a demon with a pentagram of silly string and it’ll be  _ you _ that shows up. And demon or not, she’ll still have the bottom of her shoe enchanted to beat you with-”

And sometimes, some fates are worse than death.

Feral fear at the thought of his sister finding out he was murdered by a man with the beard of Santa Clause, he wakes up from his daydream of resignation. Struggling, he attempts to scrabble on Jackass without any support, unsure how to fucking  _ get on this horse _ because his lanky legs can barely hook itself with enough leverage over her back, and he feels his cheeks that were stinging from the swirling paints of cold and frost that encompasses him, suddenly soothe from warmth.

Because he’s fucking  _ embarrassed _ that’s why. 

He’s currently trying to get his bone stilted legs over a horse while his crotch dies by the fact that his skinny jeans can’t damn  _ stretch _ enough for him to properly get onto the horse, and Bubba is  _ witnessing this. _

And maybe Bubba notices the obvious humiliation, but more likely, it’s because there’s a three-tooth yee-yee man is carrying a shooting stick and currently less than a minute run away from them, but he’s twisting around, clearly hoping to find an opportunity to help him.

Marshall Lee makes the mistake of looking over his shoulder. 

He encounters Satan, illustrated through the physical horror of a gaunt countenance highlighting two glimmering orbs radiating something  _ wrong, _ as there are only two dark pinpricks within the sea of glowing white, quivering intensely.

It’s like Mothman, but instead of half of each species, the ratio of human to moth is 2:1.

He feels a strong grip clench both his forearms, and start to drag him up, giving him enough height to properly straddle the horse, and then the hands start scrabbling around his waist and flannel to stabilize him, and this is when Marshall realizes the second problem.

His jeans, his  _ damn _ hot ass ripped jeans, is currently affect the flexibility of his hips, and are five seconds away from betraying him by sending him teetering off Jackass (who was surprisingly still while he basically harassed her for an entire minute of trying to seat himself). Great.  _ This is just great, I knew it, I knew death was the only viable option, should’ve just let the man drag me away and probably roast me for a two-member-family cookout, _ and then, the horse starts  _ moving. _

“Oh my God,” he wheezes, shock deflating his lungs to a painful throb, and before he knows it, his arms sling themselves around Bubba’s neck, which conceives a shriek from the boy in front of him. “Oh my  _ God _ ,” he shouts over Bubba’s shout, only to amplify his own volume at the incoherent screeching from the Yee-Yee man. Said man is saying words that vaguely remind him of sentences put through Google Translate a couple times, before being reconstructed in grammar rules that only Yoda follows. 

“Mar-Marshall,” a faint rasp escapes from the boy in front of him, but Marshall, terrified by the fact that Jackass is now rearing, snorting and starting to fully  _ gallop _ , and Bubba goes flying forward, his entire body supported and anchored by Jackass’ neck that he’s clinging on, and Marshall finds himself tightening his rather unfriendly hug around Bubba. “Marshall you are  _ choke-holding me _ MARSHALL-” 

And Marshall can insouciently review Bubba’s words, process it without fully comprehending to the point where he can multitask with his emotions having an individual reaction, but hey, maybe, just maybe, it’s because he can hear blood-curdling shrieking behind him that’s only blurring into distant smears of sound by the wind flushing past his ears because they’re going so damn fast, and it’s harmonizing with whatever weird breathing rhythm Bubba’s initiating in front of him like he’s having an allergic reaction-

Then, Marshall hears the first real distinct sound above the mess of his own breathing and the Blur Tool enacted on his environment. 

A gunshot.

And that gunshot suddenly startles him back into reality, cold flushing through his system in the form of adrenaline and sudden fear, as he’s able to properly compartmentalize every sound with each of its proper source.

“Oh, Bubba, are you choking?”

“Eughgksh.”

“You should’ve just said so,” Marshall says, quickly unlooping the crook of his elbow from Bubba’s throat, and then, pretending like this isn’t weirdly platonically intimate (because he doesn’t do this with anyone but Marcey in the middle of the night when his sleep paralysis demon in the form of Wall-E on crack finally leaves him alone, so just in general, touching is a weird thing for him), reluctantly encircles his arms around Bubba’s waist, that is significantly lower.  _ Haha, short.  _

Then, another gunshot tears through their eardrums, and this time, Jackass responds in the form of skittering, then  _ bucking _ (and Marshall, who always easily got carsick, realizes with faint resignation that he already basically killed off any dignity within the past five minutes, and that if he vomits nothing but stomach acid over Bubba’s hair, might as well do it now after everything that had already happened). 

Then, to his absolute  _ horror _ , Jackass starts trampling over branches, entering a weird blobby darkness that Marshall is only now able to identify as the woods.

“Are you okay?”

_ “No. _ ” And to Marshall’s unprioritized relief, Bubba doesn’t ask another sincerely dumb question again. 

However, Marshall, who wasn’t really paying attention as he was entirely fixated on his increasing migraine and the bristling of the chilly temperature creeping underneath his flannel and though the lacerations on his jeans, gets whacked by something burred and jagged.

Right on his eye.

Hissing, a wet inhale gurgling in the back of his throat because  _ that shit hurted _ , he finds himself unintentionally curling into himself, his arms tightening  _ hard _ because if he has to suffer then unconsciously everyone else has to too. His forehead, blinded by the suffocating tissue in his bad eye, quickly slams down on Bubba’s back that’s cushioned with his pink sweater. 

“Dude- please, your grip- and stop _ dying _ Jesus-”

Marshall, who’s only in this decision because of Bubba’s moral compass (or common sense, basically synonymous) that insisted they tried to sneak Jackass back into the barn rather than just let her run wild as was Marshall’s plan, properly erases Bubba’s personal concerns and focuses on himself instead. Though, another valid reason as to why he’s self-centered at the moment could be because it feels like Dwayne the Rock decided to reenter his boxing career with his brain being the first opponent. 

“No, I just got decked by a branch.”

At this, Bubba gives him a respectful second of silence for his clear loss, before saying lightly, “you know, that’s pretty funny.”

“No it’s  _ not _ ,” he gripes, too far gone in his pain to realize that he’s doing that voice that Marcey would scorn for its squeamish tone, and clinging onto Bubba the same way he used to whenever he’d return home with scraps, snotty tears that she’d gracefully accept with a pat on his head, even when he began to tower over her in high school years, letting him collapse boneless and tired against her own weary frame that creaks its own symphony of flushed dreams and unspeakable sadness.

And that’s too deep for an instance of getting smacked with a branch. 

Even though it felt like a deity’s punishment of his existence, and it creates a new vague concern that maybe the jagged texture might’ve cut into his tender skin. 

Well, if that’s the case, perhaps Bubba would be willing to lend out a couple more Spongebob Band-Aids, even though really, all Marshall’s done was ruin his party, duked out with his ex in his bathroom, probably triggered some dormant anxiety within him that he hadn’t known existed, and tried to asphyxiate him and then unnecessarily do the Heimlich while on a moving horse both in the span of five minutes.

Fine then. Not like he needs customized pink stickers.

Lost in the sauce of internalized homicidal intent, Marshall needs to take a moment to realize that his dizziness has died slightly. Jackass is now reducing her speed to a trotting pace, her hooves crushing dried twigs and leaves like a customized ASMR, except now they’re really immersed in a POV, since they’re literally on a horse in the middle of nowhere, the moonlight scattered by too much vegetation and leafy branches.

“Where are we?” Marshall murmurs, his head shifting against the sweater, too frightened to properly lift up his head, unsure if his spine could properly support it. It feels as though water’s sloshing through his brain, and if he attempts to sit up, it’ll unbalance his entire system by swirling everywhere, and that his safest option is to have something else like Bubba’s pillowed back to support it.

“The woods.”

“Really? The branch told me that we were in the middle of a desert.”

“Can you  _ not _ .”

“No,” Marshall whispers with an exhale, having drained all his energy, all his Big Brain juice on that one sardonic remark, and right now, all he can muster are one-answer responses, as actually saying the words only dishevels his balance and heightens his motion sickness. He wants to warn Bubba that if he moves, Marshall is most definitely going to start upchucking acid and misery up onto Jackass’ fur coat and probably onto Bubba. After all, for one, gotta give a dude a warning no matter how much he might wanna square up with Bubba, and secondly, it’ll be a temporary sense of victory to hear Bubba’s indignation as point-five seconds before disaster.

“Hey, Marshall, seriously, are you okay?” Bubba’s voice floats past him in the distance, and Marshall doesn’t reply, fatigue and the fear that the moment he physically opens his mouth, he will actually throw up. “Marshall?” 

He gives a weak squeeze around Bubba’s waist.

“Are you dying? Did the branch actually hurt that much?” And now Bubba’s twisting in his seat, attempting to get a glimpse of Marshall over his shoulders, and at the sudden movement, Marshall’s entire system goes haywire, and he gives a groan strangled by a whine. He wants Marcey.

He wants mom. Simone.  _ Whatever. _

“Wait, okay, okay, sorry,” Bubba breathes, his words rushed not by typical irritation, but by obvious concern. “I mean. I guess stealing a horse would cause a lot of stress.”

“I get car sick easily.” Marshall breathes, giving implication that he’s not dying even though he thinks Satan is trying to give his non-existent vagina a menstrual cycle while filling his lungs with wet cement (though, judging by the intensity of his headache, the coldness swarming his body uncomfortably, he’s starting to think maybe it’s not just carsickness anymore).He’s pretty sure that Bubba, who admittedly has at least more than two brain cells, can probably decipher what Marshall’s trying to say.

“Are...are you going to throw up on me?”

And that’s  _ exactly _ it.

Bubba’s voice, that’s hovering between forced placidness that’s comically due to its obvious hysterical undertone, is  _ great _ , if Marshall doesn’t feel like the bubonic plague is trying to revive itself within his kidneys.

“Wait, okay, Marshall, I think. I think I can see the clearing, we’re out of the woods, and I know that house- Marshall we’re at the end of my neighbourhood! We’re almost home!”

And Marshall suddenly has an intense anime flashback to the past hour of vomiting in the toilet, Ash who’s probably not as unconscious anymore, something about Iron Man, and decides maybe he should really just black out from migraine, cold, and motion sickness right now to avoid going back.

“Marshall?”

“HhHhHhh.”

“Okay, you’re alive, that’s good.”

Then, Jackass begins to run.

_ Well, not anymore I’m not. _

* * *

 

“Why is there a horse in your living room.”

Now, Marshall actually does have a proper response, having dealt with Marceline’s tone that indicates he’s five seconds from danger, and he opens his mouth to reply.

And in front of an entire crowd of students in his grade, with Iron Man’s face illuminating the wall behind him as a sufficient backdrop, with Bubba voluntarily slinging his arm around his waist because he’s short (ha) and to make sure Marshall doesn’t fucking fold in on himself like a metal chair, he vomits straight on Marceline’s carefully kept shoes.

To the side, Jackass begins to lick the puddle of watery bile.

Silence.

Then, a very calm, "Marshall Abadeer Lee. What the _Fuck_." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter:  
> marshall and bubba fight over legal custody of the horse and what to name it 
> 
> marceline gets a mug.


End file.
